Search

NEWSLETTER TODD COLLECTION As our readers know, Ruthven Todd died in Galilea, Mallorca, 11 October 1978. According to Robert Latona of The American School in Mallorca, Todd’s collection of books, prints, and photos related to Blake will be going to the University of Leeds, where they will form the nucleus of a new collection. Leeds will also receive Todd’s papers on Blake, including manuscript material that was to have been included in the revised life of Blake by Gilchrist.

RUTHVEN TODD MEMOIR There is a feature essay on Ruthven Todd by Julian Symons—poet, crime-story writer, critic, editor—in the April/May issue of London Magazine.

REVIEWS Janet M. Todd, ed. A Wollstonecraft Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. $16.50. (...) And if he read Wollstonecraft on the French Revolution, he would surely have been struck—as Janet Todd points out that John Adams and Percy Bysshe Shelley were—by its idea of mental evolution (“the image of God implanted in our nature is now more rapidly expanding”), her dialectical view of history and politics, and her ability both to deplore and to analyze the causes of revolutionary violence. Todd’s Wollstonecraft Anthology performs the valuable service of making selections available from all the author’s works, some of which exist in print only in expensive facsimile editions.

*A Query from Ruthven Todd Ruthven Todd is now gathering material for a final working over of his edition of Gilchrist’s biography of Blake. (...) Contributors will be credited in print for their assistance. Todd’s address is Ca’n Bieló, Galilea, Mallorca, Spain.

A Tentative Note on the Economics of The Canterbury Pilgrims by Ruthven Todd The printing of intaglio plates was never a driving impulse with William Blake, despite The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los.

MINUTE PARTICULARS “POISONOUS BLUES,” AND OTHER PIGMENTS By Ruthven Todd NOTE: Several years ago, in Blake Newsletter 28, we published a short piece by Robert M. (...) Soon we received a letter from Ruthven Todd giving us his preliminary thoughts on the matter and promising, as Ruthven’s letters always did, further thoughts in publishable form. (...) It had a more symbolical than actual pigmentary meaning by the end of the 18th Century. [Todd’s typescript leaves off here.]

RUTHVEN TODD’S BLAKE PAPERS AT LEEDS G. E. BENTLEY, JR. In 1978, the books and papers of Ruthven Campbell Todd relating to William Blake were given by his son Dr. F. C. C. Todd to the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds. (...) Graham Robertson (1907), Todd’s copy marked on the endpaper and flyleaves “Working Copy No 1 Ruthven Todd 1940 Annotated and 29 de mayo de 1966.

Dodsley]). Henry John Todd’s ed. of Comus in 1798 follows the 1645 version, although like Warton’s it updates the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization (A Mask . . . (...) Bristow, et al.]; rpt. as part of Todd’s edn. of Milton’s Poetical Works in 1801, 1809, 1826, etc. The passages I cite, which do not vary significantly from version to version, come from Todd’s 1798 ed. Because Todd reproduces the 1645 version, his line numbers are the same as those in the more accessible modern ed. by Merritt Y.

Mabel Zahn, Sessler’s employee of many years who oversaw prints and drawings, told me that she had been corresponding with Ruthven Todd about the work, and that Todd had in turn told Butlin about it. (...) Todd’s letter begins with the forceful statement that “I find that Martin Butlin agrees with me that Mrs. (...) Zahn included a photocopy of Todd’s letter with her letter to me of 19 Aug. 1971. 3.

I assume that Keynes is simply mistaken on this point. Todd, in his essay on the twentieth-century restrikes (see note 13), repeats Keynes’s figure for the c. 1892 printing and claims that “170 sets” were printed in 1838 (p. 4 in the last version of Todd’s essay). (...) I take Todd’s “170” to be another error. Bentley provides answers to the questions surrounding the 1838 press runs in his Blake Books of 1977. (...) In his essays, Todd is forthrightly critical of the c. 1954 impressions but praises the 1968 restrikes.