Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G. E. Bentley Jr (review)

“There are critics who can find things in the Public Records Office, and there are critics who, like myself, could not find the Public Records Office.” This quip from Northrop Frye, quoted by Mary Lynn Johnson (131), captures the conjunction of Blake studies at the University of Toronto in the methodologically opposite figures of Frye and G. E. Bentley Jr. Canadians can be proud of an inordinate per capita ratio of stellar Blake scholars, but these two are the world-scale giants: anyone reading Blake seriously will have Frye’s Fearful Symmetry and Bentley’s Blake Records within reach. Johnson makes the point that now, thanks to the information superhighway, one no longer needs to find the Public Records Office to do archival research. Bentley’s life’s work similarly has brought a vast amount of information on Blake and his circle out of its recondite repositories. He has pointed the way to rich mines for other biographical, bibliographical, and chalcographical scholars to dig and has given interpretive scholars a more solid ground on which to stand.

It could not be said that this book is aimed at a wide audience: it speaks to Blakeans, and a particular kind of Blakean at that. Although the focus is minute, the implications are large. Collectively, the essays conjure up Blake’s world from his surroundings to his working materials, to the afterlife of his works and the lives of his collectors, students, and enthusiasts. In this way, the volume has something broader to offer those interested in print culture and book history; collections and archives; art restoration, reproduction, and forgery; nineteenth-century material culture; and also religious and scientific cultures as they intersect with Blake and his inheritors.

Why would such a historically driven book be called Blake in Our Time? Perhaps to show that history is now: the materials which reveal Blake in his time exist in ours, as do the efforts of the scholars who study them. While the encounters of historical friends like Blake and Cumberland are assiduously traced, the notes, as well as Mulhallen’s introduction, reveal a generous fellowship: these scholars share finds, help solve each other’s queries, take photographs of and check manuscripts for each other. As if the loving tributes to Bentley were not evidence enough.

It is unfortunate that the list of contributors is rather male heavy, because this fellowship does not operate entirely as a boys’ club, as the work by the women involved attests (the editor and the authors of two out of ten essays). Elizabeth Bentley appears at the beginning and end as a formidable force who has helped make possible much of what is celebrated in the book. Robert N. Essick describes the Bentleys’ system for book collecting as “a perfect team effort” (30), and Robert Brandeis makes it clear that the Bentley Collection (now housed and growing in the Victoria University Library) is the fruit of their collaborative effort over decades. In light of her long endurance of Parkinson’s disease, and her peaceful passing in June 2011, the picture of this collaboration becomes a poignant memorial, recording an important and characteristic part of her life and accomplishments.

In August 2010, with both Bentleys in attendance, a Blake in Our Time symposium was held at the University of Toronto. Many contributors participated, but the roster went beyond the contents of the book both in range of speakers and topics of discussion. The entire symposium is now available in free podcasts on the Victoria University Library website and Zoamorphosis: The Blake 2.0 Blog, making this Blake fellowship virtually global.

The book features many of the best established and new scholars in this area of Blake studies. Some authors revisit Bentley’s or their own research to offer fresh discoveries and interpretations, while others explore previously untrodden territory. Mulhallen’s introduction, through Blake’s line “He who would do good to another, must do it...