William Blake. A Critical Essay. With Illustrations from Blake's Designs in Facsimile colored and Plain.

8vo. London: John Camden Hotten, 1868. 8vo, iv, (4), 304, (16, ads) pp.With a hand-colored frontispiece, hand-colored title, and seven plates, of which 5 are hand-colored. With the 1st published state of the title page (“Zamiel/From the Book of Job” beneath the vignette). Original blue cloth, repaired, spine age-darkened. First edition, first published state of the first book of criticism on Blake. See Paley, John Camden Hotten, A.C. Swinburne, and the Blake facsimiles of 1868, NYPL Bulletin 1976, for a fascinating account of the publication of these first color facsimiles of any of Blake’s work, in which he identified the facsimilist as H. J. Bellars and gives much information on the creation and coloring of the facsimiles. Bentley, BB, 2795A. (Inventory #: 108959)