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The Gates of Paradise
Scheduled for publication this month: a facsimile reproduction of the complete Gates of Paradise, published for the William Blake Trust by the Trianon Press (Chateau de Boissia, Clairvaux, Jura, France).
Volume 1 includes seventeen preliminary sketches from Blake’s Notebook, reproduced in facsimile by collotype, together with Sir Geoffrey Keynes’s introduction, page-by-page explanation and comparative study of all three stages of the work, and a census of every known copy of the two volumes of engravings. In his illuminating text, Sir Geoffrey has outlined the origins of Blake’s project from a series of sixty-four drawings in the Notebook which are listed and described. From these drawings Blake chose seventeen which he engraved and issued in 1793 entitled For Children. The Gates of Paradise. Later, in about 1818, he re-worked all the plates, adding three and issued them under the title For the Sexes. Volume 2 of this edition is a facsimile of the For Children series made from the Lessing J. Rosenwald copy in the Library of Congress, and contains additional states of an earlier version. Volume 3 is a facsimile of the Huntington Library copy of For the Sexes, together with a number of comparative plates from other sources.
The engravings have been reproduced in facsimile by two-tone collotype with the plate mark impressed from hand-bevelled copper plates. The paper is pure rag Arches Vergé. The edition is limited to 700 copies for sale: 50 copies numbered 1 to 50, containing extra plates and material used in printing the book, are bound in full morocco and presented in a cloth slip-case (49 gns.); 650 copies numbered 51 to 700 are bound in cloth and presented in a cloth-covered slip-case (16 gns.).