Jerusalem. The Emanation of the Giant Albion. 1804

1877. [London: John Pearson, 1877].

Large 4to, 100 plates, printed in black and white, with black framing lines. Original upper blue-gray wrapper, backstrip and lower wrapper supplied, text block untrimmed.

ß A wonderful facsimile of copy D (now at Harvard), limited to 100 copies per Bentley and Keynes but an old Quaritch catalogue stated 250 (an unlikely number, although a copy is recorded with the number "385" on the front wrapper). This copy numbered 5 on the upper cover. Bentley attributed the publication to Chatto but revised it to Pearson in his Blake Books Supplement. The Rinder copy reproduced by the Trianon Press is in a smaller format and this large quarto has a much more imposing and appealing presence and seems to be a better facsimile - certainly this copy is clearer and more striking than copy C. Bentley, BB, 76, and BBS, p. 88.

Blake s final and longest epic in illuminated printing constitutes a recapitulation and summation of his multiple interests, ranging from his own mythology to biblical history, from sexuality to epistemology, and from the Druids to Newton. The cast of characters is vast, but Los (the artist s imagination at work in the material world), Jerusalem and Albion (the female and male portions of divided humanity who must be reunited), the nature goddess Vala, and Jesus play major roles. (The Blake Archive)†Blake made five copies of Jerusalem but only colored one. A suite of 25 plates was also colored by Blake, and a few posthumous copies were printed in tints. The one-hundred plates of†Jerusalem†were etched in relief, with many designs in white-line etching, between c. 1804 (the date on the title page) and 1820.