14 February 2007

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of an electronic edition of two copies--one uncolored and one hand colored--of Blake's engraved illustrations to Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1797). Both copies are presented in our Preview mode, one that provides all the features of the Archive except Image Search and Inote (our image annotation program).

With what must have been enormous energy, Blake executed 537 water colors illustrating the poem's nine sections, which Young called "Nights," for the publisher Richard Edwards. The 1797 volume included a selection of illustrations for the first four Nights, but Edwards closed his publishing business before any further volumes could be issued. Many copies include a two-page "Explanation of the Engravings," possibly written by Blake's friend and fellow-artist Henry Fuseli. The texts of these commentaries are included in the Editor's Notes for each plate.

The colorist(s) of the twenty-seven traced colored copies have never been convincingly identified. The copy now published in the Archive, from the Huntington Library, was very probably colored shortly after publication.

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 and museums 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