William Blake, Printmaker

Princeton University Press, Princeton, first edition, 1980. Cloth, 4to, 29 cm,. xxii, 283 pp, frontispiece and 236 ills, facs. From the blurb - "Focusing on the role printmaking played in William Blake's development as an artist and poet, Robert Essick fosters a new understanding of the illuminated books and the ways in which their graphic techniques give a visual presence to Blake's concepts. More than two hundred illustrations provide a representative visual survey of the full range of Blake's graphic productions. As a discussion of Blake's attitudes toward conventional print technology and of the revolutionary graphic processes he invented, this book also constitutes a virtual history of eighteenth-century English printmaking. The author provides a wealth of new information on Blake's apprenticeship in reproductive engraving, on his graphic styles and techniques in both his original and copy prints, on the dating of his most important intaglio plates, on his theories of “appropriate form” in the graphic arts, and on the significance of printmaking imagery in his poems. In addition, he offers a thorough explanation of Blake's unique methods of relief etching based on a careful study of the original impressions and on his own experiments with Blake's techniques. Professor Essick concludes with a discussion of Blake's final graphic masterpieces—the Job, Dante, and Virgil prints—which he views as the successful culmination of Blake's long struggle to use his professional craft to embody his highest aspirations as an artist. Name and date on front free endpaper, otherwise Very Good in a somewhat browned and slightly worn dustwrapper.