Today's Topics:
Re: lists
Locating Out-of-Print Books
Re: lists
why?/why not?
Re: Blake sightings
Re: Blake sightings
R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Never pain, etc.
Film "Dead Man"
Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Re: The Latest Blast from Dumain
Re: Film "Dead Man"
Re: Film "Dead Man"
RCPT: Re: lists
RCPT: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Re:tom volger on 20/20 blake
Dorrbecker
Blake in the library
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 14:34:55 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: lists
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>> lists
>The question is not what it means, but whether you instinctively
>like it....
I instinctively liked "Dead Man", and thought it was a great homage to
Blake. True, it was its own artistic achievement, but the way Johnny Depp
looked out the train window and saw... this... then that... or was riding
in the forest with Nobody... and at one point it's birch trees... another
point it's evergreens...
In the film, Johnny played a guy who came to town, meek, but forced to
toughen up. Resonance to the beginning of "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
done quite well, I thought.
The images of that City invoked not only Metropolis but the Dark Satanic
Mills that Blake saw.
William Hurt was utterly genius.
Also smiled when the guy died from drinking standing water.
And when did Johnny himself die, anyway? When he got shot? Or when Nobody
finally put him in the canoe at the end? Was the whole thing... a dream?
Neil Young's soundtrack, though I don't own it, is impregnated in my memory
as abstract cries both in and against desolation. Another Blakean tribute,
in my opinion.
But then again, that's just what I instinctively FEEL..........
By the way, do you think Robert Kennedy was paraphrasing William Blake when
he said, and I merely paraphrase here:
"Some see things as they are and say 'Why?' I see things that never were,
and say, 'Why not?'"
"What is now proved was once only imagin'd."
---Plate 8, "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Probably just... kindred spirits... I suppose...
-Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 13:34:50 -0800
From: marilyn carbonell
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Locating Out-of-Print Books
Message-Id: <3312097A.22C4@smtpgate.umkc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Locating out-of-print books on William Blake can be somewhat easier if
one has access to the WorldWide Web via Netscape. Last fall, the library
needed to replace several Blake books, and we located copies that were
reasonably priced using 2 out-of-print WWW services:
Advanced Book Exchange
A check today showed over 200+ books with "William Blake" in the title.
Searches can be done by author, title, publisher, etc. and combinations,
or limited to certain categories of booksellers. The book's description
is given, with price and information on the bookseller. Orders can be
sent email, fax or phone. One can compare offers ,e.g., Thomas Altizer's
is offered at $30. The number of booksellers using
ABE is more than 60. Want lists can be maintained.
BIBLIOFIND
Equally easy to use. Some of the same booksellers listed in ABE are here
on Bibliofind. Someone listed Altizer's New Apolcalypse at $12 today.
Happy Book Hunting on the Web...
--Marilyn C.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marilyn R. Carbonell
Assistant Director for Collection Development
University of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries
5100 Rockhill RD, Kansas City, MO 64110
Tel. 816/235-1580 or 1528 FAX 816/333-5584
Email mcarbonell@cctr.umkc.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 97 14:05:08 -0800
From: Seth T. Ross
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: khuri1018@worldnet.att.net
Subject: Re: lists
Message-Id: <9702242205.AA03527@albion.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
>>lists
>What does that word mean???
khuri1018@worldnet.att.net was trying to invoke the "lists" command supported
by some mail servers. The command sends back a list of lists. It doesn't work
on the albion.com server -- this person has wasted our time for naught. As
always, adminstrative requests should be sent to blake-request@albion.com and
not to the whole list.
Seth
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 16:01:06 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: why?/why not?
Message-Id: <97022416010687@wc.stephens.edu>
Sorry but Blake had nothing to do with RFK's favorite quotation.
The "original" is usually found in G.B. Shaw's _Back to Methuselah_--
the serpent speaking to Eve -- and then JFK used it in his inaugural
and then RFK used it as the theme of his campaign and then EMK used
it in his eulogy for RFK, and so it has become something of a
refrain, but it is not Blakean. Blake would never be so fatuous
as GBS's serpent (unlike Milton, GBS was not of the devil's part,
though he may have wished he could be)--(yup, that should be
"party"). Kindred spirits? Naaah.
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: 24 Feb 1997 15:06:32 -0800
From: "Tom Vogler"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake sightings
Message-Id:
Reply to: RE>Blake sightings
I must offer a brief dissent from the suggestion that George Coates' _Blake
20/20_ is a "must see." I thought it was a poor aesthetic/intellectual
experience on its own (i.e. without consideration or judgment of its attempts
to use Blake). But if you consider its illusionistic 3-D aesthetic, one could
argue that to be quite contrary to Blake's principles and practice. And if you
get serious about what--for example-- "Thel" and "Los" are in Blake's work,
then it's evaen worse. Surely a work purporting to be in the spirit of, and
even to "honor" an artist, ought to take him more seriously than this? Blake
is simply raided at the level of word and image to make a promiscuous collage
that "means" little more than warmed over D.H. Lawrence. At 35 bucks a pop,
I'd recommend renting _Dead Man_ again.
--tomvogler
--------------------------------------
Date: 2/23/97 11:27 PM
To: Tom Vogler
From: blake@albion.com
The fine arts museums of San Francisco have a great searchable site on
the Web for art images. A search of "Blake" turned up 102 'hits', which
include a lot of obscure images from Blake.
The URL is http://www.thinker.org/
Additionally, I went to see George Coates 20/20 Blake. It was a
sumptuous visual feast, with music that ranged from curious to
excellent. I wasn't expecting to like Blake's images in 3D, but I was
amazed at how they turned out. The take on Blake's poetry was
interesting, and Coates has made somewhat of a new drama out of some
Blake characters, with Urizen "a false god of fear and punishment"
stalking Enitharman and Los. One needs to check out ones academic
concerns when you put on the 3D glasses.
I went with a friend who had minimal knowledge of Blake before the
show. He enjoyed the visuals and music, and assured me he didn't have
too much more of an uderstanding of Blake after the show. That's not
the point however. Some of the images that Coates created were very
striking. One particularly excellent moment came when Los was exploring
the emensity and the webs of Vala, which were illustrated using an
expanding rotating web illuminated by multi-colored lights, which gave
the effect of jewelled nets.
If the show moves on and moves to your town it is definetly an
experience not to miss.
The web site is: http://www.georgecoates.org
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 16:51:56 -0700
From: Shahir.El-Shaieb@centigram.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake sightings
Message-Id: <88256449.00036FEC.00@notes.centigram.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Shahir El-Shaieb
02/24/97 04:51 PM
Thanks, Tom Vogler, for your review of George Coates' _Blake 20/20_. I was
considering going to see it based on the previous review ... though the
mere idea of Blake's art in 3D with live action did seem a little too
"postmodern for the sake of postmodernity"--or 50's SF ... thanks for
preventing that catastrophy for me.
By the by: I've been watching this list for about three weeks now and I
thought it was about time I proferred an introduction. My name is Shahir
El-Shaieb, 24. I'm not currently in school--am working as an electronic
publisher in San Jose CA and saving for grad school, where I will study
film genres. I hold a BA in modern lit from UC Santa Cruz, where (among
other revelations) I was introduced to Blake by professor (and Blake list
member) Tom Vogler. Blake sticks with me; his words and images resonate in
some part of my being that I do not fully understand, and that is why I am
a subscriber to this list.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:04:25 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Thank you, Mr. Dillingham, for your opposition to my view of trying to
connect Robert Kennedy's words to those of Blake. I notice your logical
reasoning as you try to dismiss it, and offer my imaginative connections to
further buttress my case as well as to disclose attributes of Blake himself
which have some bearing in the matter.
The Kennedy quote starts with:
"Some people see things as they were, and say why?"
Well, actually RFK was one of those people that saw things and said, "Why?"
He saw the "chimney sweepers" of his day-- unbelievable poverty in the
Black South, incredibly bad mistreatment of migrant workers in California
which led him to align himself with Cesar Chavez-- and thought it could
relieved somewhat by perhaps the magic wand of government's Big Brother
role.
I also believe he went to South Africa in an appeal to end apartheid.
Beyond that, he was Romantic-Idealist enough (and perhaps foolish) to think
that he could, when he was younger, as Attorney General, simply "stop"
organized crime. One can only speculate how much of that, and other
idealistic opinions he had, contributed to both his and his brother's
death.
"I see things that never were, and say why not?"
Again, a resonance to his brother, who challenged the US to go to the moon,
with incredible spin-off effects to the civilian economy, not least of
which was, perhaps, the invention of the microcomputer over which we all in
this list now communicate today. But what other things was RFK implying,
that Blake might have shed a tear in sympathy for? That the disparity
between rich and poor was too great? Again, a resonance back to his
brother's idealism in starting the Peace Corps, no matter how flawed the
actual execution was. That "national service" should be required, so that
people give back to the country that made them? Maybe Blake would have seen
that as coercion. Maybe, in its diluted form that Clinton has tried,
Americorps, Blake would agree that it's not based on "pity" but a helping
hand, not a handout.
One thing that Robert Kennedy did was to INSPIRE people, as did his
brother, and Martin Luther King. And, to me, that ability to inspire is
another link to Blake. Because, as Oscar Wilde once said (and I merely
paraphrase), "Utopia is that place to which we are always heading." And I'm
not waiting for the Second Coming to try to make this world a better place.
Neither did Schindler, in _Schindler's List_, which I saw two nights ago.
Every step, every action that you make, has profound meaning in the
eternity of things.
Blake, however, had some problems with "leaders", didn't he? As I recall,
he gave someone back a book on Washington and said something to the effect
of, "I suppose Americans must have their Washington as the French now have
their Napoleon." Now... is there a little difference between Napoleon, who,
as well as building nice new roads, wanted to conquer all of Europe, and
Washington, a kind of reluctant, magnanimous, gentleman farmer? Here Blake,
who so often delineates differences between men or types, blurs them. Is
there any difference between the Romanticism that R.F. Kennedy expressed
and the Romanticism expressed by Hitler?
In the spirit of true friendship------
Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:58:51 -0600
From: tomdill@wc.stephens.edu (TOM DILLINGHAM)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Message-Id: <97022509585178@wc.stephens.edu>
"Enthusiasm: a vain belief in private revelation"--Samuel Johnson's
Dictionary--if you prefer private definitions and obvious fabrications,
then feel free to espouse the febrile fantasies of Mr. Albright. He
may well bewitch you with his "metaphysics". Arguing with him is
jousting with vapours perfumed with the auras of certain very private
chambers of the gut. Those dark brown odors dissipate rapidly, thank
goodness.
Or, as Blake said of Bacon, "Surely the Man who wrote this never talked
to any but Coxcombs."
Tom Dillingham
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 08:01:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Ralph Dumain
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Message-Id: <199702251601.IAA26940@igc4.igc.org>
Albright, you are a fool. Do you really want to debate political
science on a Blake list? You don't have much of a leg to stand on
when it comes to idealizing Robert Kennedy, let alone comparing
him to Blake in any way. BUt I suspect you will continue to be a
jackass until everone has unsubscribed from the
Albright-free-association Blake list. Get an intellectual life,
Albright, before you waste any more of our time.
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:20:03 -0600
From: Bryan Scott
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Never pain, etc.
Message-Id: <33131133.265F@swtexas.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Back in January, I posted a question about Blake's poem Never pain to
tell thy love, about why the words had been changed. The replies were
helpful. When I wrote I didn't know that Blake kept a notebook, now I
have a beautiful facsimile copy of it.
There still remains one question. Where did the version come from, that
I remember? Tom has convinced me that the version to be preserved should
be the poet's final version. I find from the book that Rossetti owned
the notebook for a while. Did he publish this poem in the original
wording, disregarding Blake's changes?
Can some of the wonderful people on the line tell me?
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:51:05 -0600 (CST)
From: "DR. JOSIE MCQUAIL"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Film "Dead Man"
Message-Id: <01IFTWFQIP9U8WX61N@tntech.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
My thanks go out to Blake online, especially Detlef Dorrbecker, and all of
those who referred to and sometimes recommended this film. It was a very
quirky creation but I enjoyed it very much. I loved the music and the black
and white cinematography. I would like to find the CD! I recommend it on
the basis of one viewing: in fact I plan to recommend it to my classes
which I'm sure will only confirm their opinion that I am slightly crazed!
I enjoyed Nobody's quotes of William Blake, but couldn't help thinking that
he would have been pretty unlikely to run across Blake's works in a library
even in England in the late 19th century -- what does anyone else think?
Josie McQuail
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 17:58:57 +100
From: "VLADIMIR GEORGIEU"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Message-Id: <2D4C51F7F@picasso.ceu.hu>
> Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 08:01:35 -0800 (PST)
> From: Ralph Dumain
> To: blake@albion.com
> Subject: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
> Reply-to: blake@albion.com
> Albright, you are a fool. Do you really want to debate political
> science on a Blake list? You don't have much of a leg to stand on
> when it comes to idealizing Robert Kennedy, let alone comparing
> him to Blake in any way. BUt I suspect you will continue to be a
> jackass until everone has unsubscribed from the
> Albright-free-association Blake list. Get an intellectual life,
> Albright, before you waste any more of our time.
>
>
Dumain,
You are personally abusing people again. Everyone has his/her
eccentricities, me and you included. Why do not you try to be more
understandable? 'Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of
hell fire' (Matthew 5:22).
Best wishes,
Vlado.
vladimir Georgiev
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:03:06 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: The Latest Blast from Dumain
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Mr. Dumain:
My friend.
Talk about four fold vision, DEAD...
As well as people speaking in glass houses...
Blake's work has implications in many domains, including science, political
science, philosophy, religion, and art.
Both you and Mr. Dillingham like to use the word "fool" in deriding those
(maybe it's just "me", right? Only "I" have this different face that you
love to use as a punching bag?) who don't tow your particular Blake line.
Blake had a certain amount of respect for Shakespeare, who gave some of his
greatest lines to "fools" and "clowns", while the tragic heroes themselves
often became the REAL fools.
Check out Fritjof Capra's _The Web of Life_, hippie-dippie fools who think
that Bateson was on to some good stuff, as well as Capra with _The Tao of
Physics_. Read Voltaire's _Philosophical Dictionary_ to see what HE was
deriding. Read Mary Wollstonecraft's desperate 1795 letter from Paris,
while Blake was busy touching up "Good and Evil Angels" in England. How
would Blake have survived in Revolutionary France, with what some may have
considered his "blasphemous" doctrine? Why was Voltaire so envious of
England's relative freedom of speech?
See if _The Divided Self_ and _Knots_ by R.D. Laing have nothing in common
with Blake. R.D. Laing, I have been told, is now exposed as a charlatan in
his real life practice. Freud messed up his daughter, in real life. Is
there no truth in those men's books, now that they have been "exposed"? See
if there's any connection between the way that Nietzsche or D.H. Lawrence
writes and Blake's stuff. It's for you, the reader, to either connect or
disconnect these pieces in a puzzle called Blake or life. Got it all summed
up? Down pat? Roland Barthes has something to say about this in _The Rustle
of Language_.
Part of the point in Blake is to MAKE connections. In old-style
universities, there were sometimes departments called Comparative
Literature that tried to do this. This process of getting outside of one
man's head, seeing things from new perspectives, is both the domain of a
scientist as well as an artist who does not have a weak and timid mind. For
an academic? Maybe certain ones are too concerned with protecting their own
little constructs, like sandcastles, to hear the REAL ocean roar.
And prove _The Economist_ magazine article in the March 16, 1996 issue,
"Moreover", subtitled "Crimes of Reason", a mechanistically reductionist
wrong view of The Enlightenment, as well as of Blake, when the author(s)
say:
"Blake was an artist, poet and mystic. Fervently anti-rationalist,
he had no interest in challenging rationalism analytically. But many
philosophers, among them Hegel (builder of intellectual systems _par
excellence_), echoed his view."
And who was it who started her Penguin introduction to the _Complete Poems_
with "Blake was the rebel artist _par excellence_?"
I M A G I N A T I V E C O N N E C T I O N
is at least as valid as of a starting point as
L O G I C
in talking about this man.
And, by the way, the Strand depends largely on estate sales. They swing
from being inundated by the library of someone who died and was a Blake
lover, to being bought out by perhaps just one new Blake lover. Such are
the undulations known to bookstores, and to life.
-Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:06:41 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Film "Dead Man"
Message-Id:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>I enjoyed Nobody's quotes of William Blake, but couldn't help thinking that
>he would have been pretty unlikely to run across Blake's works in a library
>even in England in the late 19th century -- what does anyone else think?
I think that this improbability is part of the disjointed, enigmatic point
of the movie.
-Randall Albright
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 23:06:37 +0100
From: timli@controls.eurotherm.co.uk (Tim Linnell)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Film "Dead Man"
Message-Id: <3695.199702252206@merlot.controls.eurotherm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>I enjoyed Nobody's quotes of William Blake, but couldn't help thinking that
>he would have been pretty unlikely to run across Blake's works in a library
>even in England in the late 19th century -- what does anyone else think?
Possibly not (although I haven't seen the film, so lack context): Blake, I
think, was reasonably well regarded by the end of the 19th Century,
particularly for the Songs of Innocence and Experience and his pictorial
art. He rates a section in Redgrave's Century of British Painters, published
in 1866, which, while describing Jerusalem as being more appropriate to
Bedlam than to South Molton Street, is otherwise quite favourable. In the
same work, Redgrave explains that 'one of the pleasures of a visit to
Linnell at Redhill was the permission to have some of these interesting
Blakes brought out for your delectation'. And I have certainly seen
collections of Blake's poetry dating from the late 1900s in second hand
bookshops which seem to be mass market books.
Tim Linnell
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:06:23 MET
From: "Ib Johansen"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RCPT: Re: lists
Message-Id:
Confirmation of reading: your message -
Date: 24 Feb 97 13:00
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: lists
Was read at 9:06, 26 Feb 97.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:36:04 MET
From: "Ib Johansen"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: RCPT: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Message-Id: <126E72CCC@hum.aau.dk>
Confirmation of reading: your message -
Date: 25 Feb 97 17:58
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: R.F. Kennedy and Blake
Was read at 9:36, 26 Feb 97.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 10:42:26 +0000 (gmt)
From: "T.J. Connolly"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re:tom volger on 20/20 blake
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
35 bucks a pop?? sounds like you could stay home and listen to a doors
album and get the same effect, huh?
I wanted to mention that I have been reading Unnamed Forms: Blake and
Textuality and have been enjoying it very much, especially Re:Naming
MIL/TON. In fact it helped me get my Ph.D. work back on track, so thanks
for the inspiration, Prof. Volger.
Tristanne
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 10:58:34 +0000 (gmt)
From: "T.J. Connolly"
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Dorrbecker
Message-Id:
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
I don't want to sound like all I do on this list is say that I love
people's books! but hopefully, the people who wrote them will be glad and
those who haven't had a chance to peruse them yet will consider them great
finds like I did... also I continue to be amazed at how many scholars I
admire partake of this list!
Dr. Dorrbecker's notes to the new, fantastic Blake Trust reproduction of
The Continental Prophecies are very exciting and intelligent. I had to do
a presentation on Europe in one of my seminar classes and those notes were
such a help--indeed, the presentation set the whole class on fire with
Blake, realizing that he didn't just write poetry like anyone else... Dr.
Dorrbecker's notes are particularly lucid on the problem (which is so
clear when talking about a book like Europe to people only partially
familiar with Blake) of how, well, bloody incomprehensible it is, how hard
it is to decide sometimes who the good guys are. So, thanks to Dr.
Dorrbecker, and recommendations of that book to all (I'm sure you know,
but it's published by Princeton UP in North America, and by the Tate
Gallery in England.)
Tristanne.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:43:43 -0600 (CST)
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake in the library
Message-Id: <199702261443.IAA03394@dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com>
Tim, I think you are right. The late 19th century looks to be exactly the period in
which Blake's works came into popular favor and probably went into lending libraries.
At the least it was a time when a great flurry of publishing activity on the collected
works commenced.
Recently I posted a note to the list on Bryan's query about the textual alterations to
the one of the "fragments" form the nb, "Never Seek..." which seems to be wandering in
cyberspace withuout a mooring. So first, I'll repeat that, because it has relevance
here.
Bryan: according to Keynes, the nb of the poems & fragments was acquired by D.G.
Rossetti in 1847 from Samuel Palmer. From 1887 it was in the possession of a Mr.
W.A. White of NY, and passed to his daughter who donated it to the British Museum in
the 1950's, where it has rested, I believe, ever since [?]. The Rossetti MS of the
poems was published in Gilchrist's Life (of Blake), 1863. The first "authoritative"
edn was done in 1905 by Sampson, and the MS was transcribed by White. Meanwhile Ellis
& Yeats had brought out editions.
What's the point of all this? If you look at the Nb, then Gilchrist, Yeats, and
Sampson, you can probably glean some information on who made changes and when. There
may be an article dealing with this or a reference to it in the bios or crits; I
haven't looked.
AS for the libraries: the publisher Bell in London began bringing out collections of
the poetical works in 1874 (I think this was the first Bell edn). The collection
went through reprints and varying editions in 1883, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1893: at least 4
edns and I-don't-know-how-many reprints. In 1875 it was pub'd in Boston. A small
volume of Blake's etching was brought out by the publishing house Chatto in London in
1878.
All of this suggests a newly-surging demand for copies of Blake's poems--even his
criticsm was included by Yeats in his 3-vol study of the poems and criticism in 1893.
But really, we should be asking asking the authorities: Mary Lynn, and (dare I ask?)
others who have worked on the collected Blake, are you out there?
Susan Reilly
You wrote:
>
>
>>I enjoyed Nobody's quotes of William Blake, but couldn't help thinking that
>>he would have been pretty unlikely to run across Blake's works in a library
>>even in England in the late 19th century -- what does anyone else think?
>
>Possibly not (although I haven't seen the film, so lack context): Blake, I
>think, was reasonably well regarded by the end of the 19th Century,
>particularly for the Songs of Innocence and Experience and his pictorial
>art. He rates a section in Redgrave's Century of British Painters, published
>in 1866, which, while describing Jerusalem as being more appropriate to
>Bedlam than to South Molton Street, is otherwise quite favourable. In the
>same work, Redgrave explains that 'one of the pleasures of a visit to
>Linnell at Redhill was the permission to have some of these interesting
>Blakes brought out for your delectation'. And I have certainly seen
>collections of Blake's poetry dating from the late 1900s in second hand
>bookshops which seem to be mass market books.
>
>
>Tim Linnell
>
>
>
>
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End of blake-d Digest V1997 Issue #24
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