discussion
begin page 96 | ↑ back to topSONGS OF INNOCENCE COPY U
In Blake Newsletter 21 (Summer 1972), p. 22, John E. Grant comments on my note (Blake Newsletter 19 [Winter 1971-72], p. 214) concerning the location of two copies of the Songs. Unfortunately, his strictures are misdirected. It is well known that Copy U of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which once belonged to the White family, is now at Princeton, but this fact has no bearing on the whereabouts of Copy U of Songs of Innocence, the subject of my note. Since Keynes and Wolf list the location of the latter exemplar as Harvard, it is hardly “odd,” in Grant’s phrase, that I should have sought it there.
My original note does, however, need correction. In a recent letter from Thomas E. Connolly to Morton D. Paley, a copy of which was forwarded to me, I learned that Connolly, after being told initially (as I was) that Copy U of Innocence was not at Harvard, later discovered that it was there after all but had not been catalogued.
Whatever pertinence Grant’s reflections may have on the use made of Blake originals, by critics or by graduate students, no serious scholar would willingly forgo the study of originals in favor of reproductions, or consider any of the former expendable.