William Blake's Writings

INDIVIDUAL TITLES

Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Copy M)  Caption title: A song of liberty.
BINDING:  Three plates (pl. 25-27) are printed on two integral leaves (one folded half-sheet); the page left blank is, very oddly, the first one.  The first (blank) page is perhaps slightly dirtier than others, and it seems slightly foxed.
PAPER SIZE:  The paper is somewhat irregular in shape, 24.3 cm wide (measured at the bottom) or 23.8 cm (at top) x 20.0 cm high (at right of inner folding) or 19.6 cm (at left).  The original deckled edges are still on the right (when looking at pl. 25-26) and top; the bottom and left edges are slightly crooked as if cut with scissors (a knife would surely have been drawn along a straight edge, as of a ruler).  The paper was folded not quite in the middle -- who is to say when and by whom it was folded?  The crease is now very firm, and there is a tiny tear at bottom of the crease.  The leaf with pl. 25 is 11.7 cm wide at the top, and that with pl. 26-27 is 12.1 wide at top.
REGISTRATION:  Pl. 25-26 are carefully registered top and bottom -- the plate-marks are very clear.  Pl. 27 is pretty carefully registered with pl. 26 -- it is very slightly higher.
HISTORY:  (1)  Sold posthumously with the John Linnell Collection at Christie's, 15 March 1918, Lot 197, to the firm of Tregaskis, which offered it in an undated note still with the prints to (2) Frank Rinder (who bought Marriage [L] listed in the same note; (3) Found by John Windle in a copy of Blake's Job^† brought to Christie's with a furniture consignment and sold anonymously at Christie's, 26 November 1997, Lot 166 (pl. 25-26 reproduced) to (4) to Dr A.E.K.L.B. Bentley.
VARIANTS:  Pl. 26, l. 6:  Copy M reads "And weep and bow thy reverend locks!" as in Copy L, rather than "And weep!" as in other copies.  In Copy M, there is a pencil "x" beside the line.
N.B.  When these letters were etched out, they were not replaced with flourishes to fill in the empty space, though every other such space is so filled.  The erasure had to be done extremely carefully, for, in the erased "thy" (l. 6), the riser of "h" is on the same level as the flourishing descender of the "y" in "eternity" above it (l. 5), the ornamental descender of the "y" in the same "thy" actually touches the riser in of the "h" in "hands" below it (l. 7), and the riser of the "k" of "locks" (l. 6) overlaps the descender of the "g" of "falling" (l. 7) -- and the overlap is still visible on copies such as B where the end of l. 6 is erased.Pl. 27:  The 8-line Chorus is not inked in Copy M.  However, the tops of the first two letters of "Chorus" and of the flourishes round it are inked.  The obscuring was probably not achieved by masking (by laying a piece of paper between the bottom of the plate and the paper-to-be-printed-on), for there is no indentation from this masking-leaf, and the portions omitted are not in a straight line -- the missing word "Chorus" is between the unobscured rearing horses. 
Further, the flourish below the word "Chorus" is visible in indentation.  Even more strikingly, in sharply-raking sunlight (but not in artificial light),  faint hints of the rest of the text of the "Chorus" are also discernable; the "dl" of "deadly" in the second line and the exclamation-point after "not" in the seventh line are particularly clear.
If these ghost-letters are truly there, this means that (1) The plate was not masked, for this embossing would scarcely show through a layer of paper; (2) The letters are not black either because (a) they were never inked or (b) the ink was wiped off or (c), probably, a combination of the two, as must be the case with the "C" of "Chorus", which is inked at the top and only embossed at the bottom; (3) The text was complete when the print was inked; it is not merely waiting for a design or inspiration to fill the space.
But of course we must be very cautious about concluding just what was written in this early version of the "Chorus".  All this evidence shows clearly is that "deadly" (or at least "dl") and "not!" (or at least "!") were present when pl. 27 of Copy M was printed.

†The Job was "in contemporary red linen box ... as described by John Linnell" (according to the Christie catalogue below) with an inscription by Frank Rinder and was sold in the same 1997 sale as the Marriage, Lot 168.  The Linnell description and box are otherwise unknown to GEB.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience (o) pl. 39, 24, 38, 53
WATERMARK:  [J WHA]TMAN │ [18]31
PRINTING COLOUR:  orangish brown / pl. 24 grey
INSCRIPTION:  "Chas E. Norton Coll." "Chas. Eliot Norton Coll." or "C. E. Norton Coll."
HISTORY:  Copy o, printed posthumously in grey, red, and orange, on different sizes of paper, consisted of at least pl. 13, 18, 20-21, 24, 36, 38-39, 46, 49, 53; (1) it was bought from B.M. Pickering for (2) the Charles Eliot Norton Collection (Boston); (3) Acquired by Paul Hyde Bonner, offered with his Library at Dutton's (1931), #34; (4) Acquired and broken up, apparently by the N.Y. dealer Weyhe; (5) pl. 39 was bought August 1963 from Weyhe Galleries (N.Y.).
Pl. 13, 20-21 are in Brown University; pl. 36 in Dartmouth; pl. 46, 49 in Wesleyan University (Middleton, Connecticut); and pl. 18, 24, 38, and 53 were recently offered by the dealer N.W. Lott.

Pl. 24, 38, and 53 purchased by Victoria University Library. Plate 24 has been trimmed to near plate mark: 14 x 10 cm.

Vala, or, The death and judgement of the ancient man [manuscript] : a dream of nine nights / by William Blake. 1797.

Photographic reproduction: London : British Museum, [196-]

Reproduced for Professor G. E. Bentley to use in the publication of a facsimile, with notes (1963).