20 December, 2006

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of electronic editions of Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, copies B and O, both in the British Museum. Like all the illuminated books in the Archive, both the texts and images of these new publications are fully searchable and are supported by our Inote and ImageSizer applications.

Copy B was produced in Blake's first printing session for Visions in 1793 and joins copies A, C, and J, also from this session and previously published in the Archive. Probably to lend variety to his stock of copies on hand, Blake used three ink colors in this first printing: yellow ochre (as in copy A), raw sienna (copies B and C), and green (copy J). As is characteristic of illuminated books produced in the early 1790s, these copies were printed on both sides of the leaves and finished in semi-transparent washes. As with several other illuminated books in the British Museum collection, the leaves of copy B are mounted close to the image in windows cut in thick paper. The inner edges of these mounts appear in some of our reproductions.

Visions copy O is the sister copy of copy P, also in the Archive. Both are printed in red-orange ink on one side of RUSE & TURNERS/1815 paper and finished in watercolors and pen and ink. Each impression is numbered in the top right corner and bordered by one thin line drawn in red-orange ink a little over a centimeter around the image, setting off each page like a miniature painting.

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible through the continuing support of the Library of Congress, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and by the cooperation of the international array of libraries, museums, and private collectors that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors
William Shaw, project manager
The William Blake Archive