Introduction

the huntington boasts one of the finest collections of William Blake materials in the world. As Robert N. Essick observed on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the institution's founding, Henry E. Huntington was "extraordinarily prescient in acquiring such a broad range of Blake's productions."¹ The collection, mostly formed by Huntington himself from 1911 onward, has helped scholars develop Blake's canonical status in British Romantic-period literature, broadened his popularity as a poet and artist, and reaffirmed his reputation as a master engraver and etcher.

The extensive and diverse repository assembled by Huntington comprises pencil sketches, watercolor drawings, and tempera paintings; illuminated books, including the only known copy of what was probably Blake's first such book, All Religions Are One (1788); specimens of Blake's commercial engravings, such as Night Thoughts (1797); his greatest achievement in line engraving, Illustrations of the Book of Job (1823–26); and perhaps the most important collection of Blake's writings published in conventional typography during his lifetime, including two copies of Poetical Sketches (1783) with manuscript corrections by Blake and the only known copy of his poem The French Revolution (1791). The Huntington also has an impressive collection of Blake's manuscripts, including the unfinished Genesis manuscript and three books with Blake's marginalia: Johann Caspar Lavater's Aphorisms on Man, Richard Watson's An Apology for the Bible, and Robert Thornton's The Lord's Prayer, which was published in April 1827 and was likely the last book Blake annotated before his death in August of that year. The single largest collection of Blake's letters, including fifteen written to John Linnell in the last two years of Blake's life, is also present.

During the last decade, interest in Blake's manuscripts has increased. This can be attributed in part to advancements in digital editing and reproduction. The British Library's electronic publication of Blake's Notebook, with an innovative interface that allows users to turn its virtual pages, gives scholars and nonacademics alike unprecedented access to an important yet extremely fragile material object. Similarly, the William Blake Archive (www.blakearchive.org), the largest repository of Blake materials on the Internet, has published a host of manuscript materials in digital form. It features Blake's satire on Bluestocking salons, An Island in the Moon (ca. 1784–85), and The Pickering Manuscript (ca. 1807), containing such poems as Auguries of Innocence, with its famous opening lines:

To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd Heaven in a Wild FlowerHold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hour

Most recently, the Blake Archive digitally published fifty-four of the ninety-four extant letters by Blake. It will also soon publish Blake's long manuscript poem Vala or the Four Zoas (1797–1806). A digital edition of Blake's annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses was made available online in 2017. It builds on Hazard Adams's Blake's Margins: An Interpretive Study of the Annotations (2009) to provide contextual information about Reynolds's lectures.² Electronic publication is not alone in providing access to manuscript materials that have been unavailable or reproduced in formats that fail to represent the original objects accurately. The Huntington Library's print publication in 2012 of a facsimile of Blake's final work, an illuminated manuscript of Genesis, offers a timely example of how publication can make difficult-to-access, often fragile manuscripts widely available.³

Blake's manuscripts are diverse. In addition to the works mentioned above, they comprise poems of varied lengths, from single couplets to over 4,000 lines, including several versions of his most anthologized verse, "The Tyger." There are also approximately ninety-four letters, although the number seems to increase every couple of years with newly discovered letters appearing in auction houses. And, at last count, there are fifteen books containing marginalia, much of which is vibrant and energetic. Sir Geoffrey Keynes was one of the first Blake scholars to recognize the importance of the manuscripts, particularly the letters, for providing insight into Blake's character and everyday life. Indeed, the facts that they preserve...