Milton, a poem in 2 books: The author & printer W. Blake. To justify the ways of God to men - NYPL Digital Collections

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Milton, a poem in 2 books: The author & printer W. Blake. To justify the ways of God to men

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Names: Blake, William, 1757-1827 (Author); Blake, William, 1757-1827 (Artist)
Dates / Origin: Date Issued: 1804 - 1808 (Approximate); Place: London; Publisher: Keynes: Blake
Library locations: Rare Book Division; Shelf locator: *KL (Blake, W. Milton, a poem in 2 books)
Topics: Milton, John, 1608-1674
Genres: Prints; Illustrations; Books; Poetry; Literature
Notes: Content: Comprises 49 hand colored and illusminated relief etchings by Blake; without the preface (Keynes pl. 2) found in copies A and B; with the additional plates a-e.; Biographical/historical: William Blake (1757-1857) shared with other Romantic poets the belief that nature embodied truths more profound than the rational mind could apprehend, and that humanity's willful dissociation of itself from nature was the cause of most of the world's ills. But Blake embraced an exaltedly visionary view of the world and a mythic form of expression unique to himself. He also sought a means of rendering his works in a print form that might rival the dynamic, organic interplay of text, decoration, and illustration found in the best medieval illuminated manuscripts. The technique Blake discovered is usually called "relief etching" to distinguish it from intaglio etching, in which the lines to be printed are lightly incised into a copper plate with an etching needle and are deepened and thickened when the plate is dipped in acid. Blake created his plates by first painting his texts and the lineaments of his illustrations and decorations on copper sheets with a very fine brush dipped in a clear acid-resist liquid. After painting the text and decoration, he immersed the plates in acid, which ate away their unpainted (that is, unprotected) areas. To print, he then inked the resulting relief portions of the plate (i.e., the lines of text, illustrative figures, and decorative lines), placed a sheet of paper upon the plate, and pressed it firmly, thereby transferring the ink from the plate's text and decorative elements onto the paper. In most of his books, all of the pages in each of the copies printed would then be water colored, usually in the identical color schemes, but embodying significant tonal differences.; Content: With bookplate of the Hamilton Palace Library Beckford Collection.; Numbering: Although the numeral in the title may also be read as 12 the work contains only two books.; Citation/reference: Keynes: Blake, 48, copy C; Keyne and Wolf: Blake's illuminated books, p. 98-103
Physical Description: Extent: 46 [i.e. 49] f. col. illus. 25 cm.; The Milton copperplates, at an average size of about 16 x 11.5 cm; binding, by J. Mackenzie, of dark blue morocco, gilt; paper watermarked: J. Whatman 1808.; Etchings
Type of Resource: Text; Still image
Identifiers: RLIN/OCLC: 41439179; NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b14163872; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 6cf01af0-c6da-012f-4659-58d385a7bc34

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