20 September 1999

The William Blake Archive http://www.blakearchive.org is pleased to announce the publication of new electronic editions of The Book of Thel copy J and Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy G.

The Book of Thel is dated 1789 by Blake on the title page, but the first plate (Thel's Motto) and the last (her descent into the netherworld) appear to have been completed and first printed in 1790, while Blake was working on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Copy J is from the first of three printings of Thel, during which Blake produced at least thirteen copies, printed in five different inks to diversify his stock. Copies from this press run were certainly on hand when Blake included the book in his advertisement "To the Public" of October 1793: "The Book of Thel, a Poem in Illuminated Printing. Quarto, with 6 designs, price 3s." Copy J joins copies in the Archive from the other two printings: copy F, printed and colored c. 1795, and copy O, printed and colored c. 1818. It also joins copy H, which is from the first printing, and, like copy J, is printed in green ink and lightly finished in watercolors. Copy J, however, was recolored when two of its questions ("Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!/Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?") on plate 8 were deleted. The lines were scraped away from the paper, apparently by Blake, since the washes over it--and those added to the other texts as well--are in his hand. This second tinting also included pen and ink outlining, the modeling of figures through the addition of complementary colors and shadows, and the over-painting of Thel's yellow dress with green on plate 6. Texts streaked in light yellows, pinks, and blues were characteristic of Blake's later coloring style and suggest that the recoloring occurred around the time the work was sold, c. 1816.

This refinishing may have been undertaken to make the book more compatible with the dark hues of Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy G, with which it appears to have been sold, and with which it was bound, probably by their original owner, c. 1816. In keeping with the poem's dark events and brooding mood, the hand coloring of Visions copy G is impressively detailed and sombre. Rather than tinting the designs with semi-transparent washes in single hues, as in the first coloring session, Blake layered his colors to deepen the tones. This style shows the influence of color printing on Blake's hand coloring during the 1794-96 period. The techniques used for copy G even include some stipple-like effects imitating the reticulations caused by color printing. Washes were also added in text margins on plates 5, 7, 10, and 11, with a splendid sunrise bursting into the text on plate 3, as in late copies O and P. Copy G is unusual in other respects as well. The frontispiece and title page are placed sequentially, as in copies O and P, rather than facing each other, but uniquely with the title page coming first. This unconventional arrangement is confirmed by Blake's pen and ink plate numbers. He originally etched numbers 2-3, 5-7 in the top right corners of plates 5-6, 8-10, but all leaves in copy G are foliated in pen and ink in a single sequence, 1-11,with the new numbers written over the old on plates 5-6, 8-9.

Copy G was printed and colored c. 1795 as part of a set of illuminated books printed on large paper and joins other works from that set now in the Archive (The Book of Thel copy F, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy D, There is No Natural Religion copy L, All Religions are One copy A, and America, a Prophecy copy A) and forthcoming (The First Book of Urizen copy B and Europe, a Prophecy copy H). It also joins copies of Visions in the Archive from other printings: copies C and J, different issues from the first printing of 1793, and copy F, color printed c. 1794. Copy P, an exemplary copy from the fourth and final printing of c. 1818, is forthcoming.

In Blake's advertisement, Visions was described as "Folio, with 8 designs, price 7s.6d." Copy G, though, was trimmed to quarto size when bound with Thel copy J. Both works are now in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The electronic editions have newly edited SGML-encoded texts and new images scanned and color-corrected from first-generation 8x10" transparencies; they are each fully searchable for both text and images and supported by the Inote and ImageSizer applications described in our previous updates.

With the publication of these two titles, the Archive now contains 37 copies of 18 separate books, including at least one copy of every one of Blake's works in illuminated printing except the 100 plates of Jerusalem (forthcoming).

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Technical Editor
The William Blake Archive

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