The Promotion of Blake’s Grave Designs
- The Promotion of Blake’s Grave Designs
Assistant Professor of English, University College, University of Toronto; author of the forthcoming William Blake’s Four Zoas and William Blake: A Bibliography
notes
1. British Museum Add. MSS. 36, 501, ff. 317–18.
2. A. Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, ed. R. Todd (London & New York, 1942), 242–3.
3. The Complete Writings of William Blake, ed. G. Keynes (London & New York, 1957), 540. 541.
4. This and all quotations from Blake’s letters are taken from the Complete Writings cited above.
5. Cromek’s opinions here and elsewhere are taken from an insufferable letter he wrote to Blake in May 1807, which is only known from the text printed (by Peter Cunningham) in his review of Mrs. Bray’s “The Life and Works of Thomas Stothard, R.A.,” The Gentleman’s Magasine, N.S., XXXVII (1852), 149–50.
6. Gilchrist, 226, asserts very positively that Blake originally engraved his own design for the frontispiece, but that this was later erased and re-engraved by Cromek.
7. On November 27, 1805 Blake told Hayley that “out Progress” with Blair “is but of about two Months Date.”
8. “The portrait itself… the artist, with a most praiseworthy liberality, has presented to Mr. Cromek”—Anon., “The Grave, a Poem …,” The Antijacobin Review and Magazine, XXXI (November, 1808), 234. This is the longest review of a work by Blake that appeared in his lifetime and has not, I believe, been noticed previously.
9. This and other quotations from Flaxman’s letters to Hayley are taken from “Blake’s Engravings and his Friendship with Flaxman,” Studies in Bibliography, XII (1959), 161–88.
10. Quoted from the MS. in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle.
11. According to John Knowles (The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, Esq. M.A. R.A. [London, 1831], I, 290–1), “Mr. Blake … distributed this year [1805] a prospectus for publishing an edition of the poem of ‘The Grave’ of William [i.e., Robert] Blair, to be illustrated with fifteen plates designed and engraved by himself…. before he entered upon its publication he submitted his drawings to the judgment of the then President of the Royal Academy (Mr, West), and also to Fuseli. The latter…wrote … [the blurb given in the prospectus and the 1808 Grave],” Clearly Knowles was misremembering the prospectus and attributing too much to Blake.
12. When this list of patrons was reprinted in the 1808 Crave, Fuseli, Northcote, Opie, Hope, and Locke were dropped and William Owen was added. B. H. Malkin (A Father’s Memoirs of His Child [London, 1806] xxv) had mentioned Messrs. Hope and Locke as patrons of the undertaking, but otherwise their interest in this venture has been unknown to Blake scholars.
13. Except in capitalization, the blurb by Fuseli given in the prospectus is exactly like that printed in the 1808 Grave.
14. In both 1808 and 1813 there were separate printings in quarto and folio of Blake’s Grave designs.
15. In 1808 subscribers’ copies were issued with a label giving the price as two and a half guineas, while others had labels marked “Price Four Guineas,” and large paper copies were five guineas.
16. All these booksellers appeared on the 1808 stitle-page, along with Murray and Constable and Co.
17. Quoted from a microfilm of British Museum Add. MSS. 33,403, f. 153. The original is with the voluminous papers relating to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravers left by Robert Dodd (1771–1810). Among these papers is an unpublished though derivative biography of Blake (Add. MSS. 33, 397, ff. 140–2).
18. A. G. B. Russell, The Engravings of William Blake (Loudon, 1912), 130, and G. Keynes, A Bibliography of William Blake (New York, 1921); see illustration.
19. Maggs Bros. Catalogue no. 501.
20. The MS. of Fuseli’s letter is in the Liverpool Public Library.
21. British Museum Add. MSS. 36,519H, f. 359.
22. British Museum Add. MSS. 36,501, f. 254.
23. The omitted matter is a prospectus for Cromek’s engraving of Dr. Currie, dedicated to William Roscoe.
24. British Museum Add. M S. 33.397, f. 144...
