The Blake, William, 1757-1827 Blake, William, 1757-1827 printer Crewe, Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, Marquis of, 1858-1945 former owner White, William Augustus, 1843-1927 former owner Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress) text enk 1815 monographic Lambeth Printed by W. Blake 1794 [i.e. 1815?] eng

print

electronic resource

remote

[28] leaves of plates : col. ill. ; 29 cm. The poet and artist William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was apprenticed to an engraver and studied drawing at the Royal Academy. In 1783 he published his first book of poetry, Poetical Sketches. Blake was a religious mystic who eschewed the traditional teaching of the Christian churches to invent his own doctrines and symbols, which he drew from classical and Celtic mythology and many other sources. This printing of The Book of Urizen from the Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress introduces a figure, Urizen, whom for Blake represented morality and legality. Most of Blake's books were not published in the traditional sense but printed for special commissions by private collectors or London booksellers. As a consequence, they are extremely rare. Blake died in 1827, in poverty and relative obscurity, but by the mid-20th century he had become, in the words of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "one of the cultural icons of the English-speaking world." World Digital Library. Originally published under title: The first book of Urizen. Printed in yellow-brown on 27 plates containing both text and hand-colored illustrations. Watermarks on paper dated 1815. LC copy has plates numbered in manuscript. DLC Also available in digital form on the Library of Congress Web site. LC copy from the libraries of the Earl of Crewe (sold 1903) and W.A. White. DLC Great Britain England London PR4144 .F5 1815 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/rosenwald.1807 1807 42F copy G 49034226 hdl:loc.rbc/rosenwald.1807 aacr DLC 810709 20250608033047.8 8827598 Converted from MARCXML to MODS version 3.8 using MARC21slim2MODS3-8_XSLT1-0.xsl (Revision 1.172 20230208) eng