Volume 2 · Issue 4

Professors Roger R. Easson and Kay Long of Blake Studies inform us of a forthcoming begin page 61 | ↑ back to top edition of A. C. Swinburne’s William Blake, with introduction and notes by Hugh J. Luke. The edition will include two short articles on Blake from La Republique des Lettres (1877), thought to be by Swinburne. The publisher is U. of Nebraska Press.

A limited edition (1,100 copies) of the Illustrations to the Divine Comedy has been published by the Da Capo Press, 227 West 17th Street, New York 10011. The edition is in portfolio form, the reproductions measuring 9 ½ × 13 inches. There are 109 plates and 5 text pages. Price: $100.00

Mr. Alan J. Marks, Executive Editor for Da Capo Press, writes:

The “first edition” of this portfolio was published in 1922 in England by the National Art-Collections Fund. The Fund had solicited contributions so that Blake’s drawings for Dante might be purchased at auction during the sale of the Linnell estate and then distributed among seven or eight museums throughout the Commonwealth. Once the drawings were purchased, and prior to their distribution, the Fund commissioned Emery Walker to prepare two hundred and fifty portfolios of collotype reproductions of all of the drawings, and these portfolios were given to the subscribers whose contributions had enabled the Fund to make the purchase.

Our edition is a “second edition” insofar as the Emery Walker printing did not include the seven engravings based upon the drawings which Blake had managed to complete prior to his death, and ours does. These engravings are reproduced full-size from a set which a private collector was good enough to lend to the Meriden Gravure Company. Otherwise, except for the portfolio itself, and of course the paper, it reproduces the first edition exactly, although the people at Meriden believe that they have actually been able to improve upon the printing, and we tend to agree with them.

The Blake Newsletter congratulates the MLA Executive Committee for its decision to move the 1969 Annual Meeting from Chicago to Denver.