Europe a Prophecy

The second of Blake's "Continental Prophecies" (see also America and The Song of Los), Europe presents in mythopoeic form the fundamental philosophical positions in conflict in Blake's revolutionary era. Historical events are reconfigured into their universalized representations through Blake's own cast of characters, including Enitharmon, the female personification of fallen nature and history, Orc, the spirit of revolt, and Los and Urizen, the "Eternals" who would become central to Blake's mythic system of the "Zoas." These contending forces lead beyond political revolution to an apocalypse of biblical scope. Only copies H and K contain pl. 3, a whimsical prefatory statement about the poem's origin.

Blake etched in relief, with considerable white-line work in some designs, and first printed the eighteen plates of Europe in 1794. The first printing of that year produced proof copies a-c. Copy a, lacking plates 3, 8, 12-16, and with plate 17 following plate 11, may be an early version of the book before the missing plates were etched. Copies b and c are not working proofs or copies but gatherings of early impressions (some, as in copy a, in early states). These groups lack the same seven plates absent from copy a and are from the same first printing. Some posthumous impressions were added to these groups by nineteenth-century owners. Copies B-G were also produced in 1794, perhaps shortly after the proof printing. There are only two later printings: 1795 (copies A and H) and 1821 (copy K). Copy A contains some opaque water colors probably added by someone other than Blake. Copies I, L, and M are posthumous.