Record Nr.

UNINA9910791048103321

Autore

Bentley G. E.

Titolo

William Blake in the desolate market / / G.E. Bentley Jr

Pubbl/distr/stampa


Montréal, Québec : , : McGill-Queen's University Press, , 2014
©2014

ISBN

0-7735-8167-7

0-7735-9029-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (297 p.)

Disciplina

821/.7

Soggetti

Engravers - Great Britain

Poets, English - 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: Blake in the Marketplace -- Blake as a Commercial Engraver, 1772-1827 -- "A Blaze of Reputation": The Mathew Salon and Poetical Sketches (1783) -- The Print Shop, 1784-1785 -- Blake as a Teacher, 1784-1827 -- The Blakes as Printers, 1784-1827 -- Blake as a Painter, 1779-1827 -- Blake as Publisher of Works in Conventional Typography -- Blake's Works in Illuminated Printing, 1789-1827 -- Summary of Blake's Career -- Appendix: Blake's Patrons.

Sommario/riassunto

Experience taught William Blake that "Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy." His brilliant achievements as a poet, painter, and engraver brought him public notice, but little income. William Blake in the Desolate Market records how Blake, the most original of all the major English poets, earned his living. G.E. Bentley Jr, the dean of Blake scholars, details the poet's occupations as a commercial engraver, print-seller, teacher, copperplate printer, painter, publisher, and vendor of his own books. In his early career as a commercial engraver, Blake was modestly prosperous, but thereafter his fortunes declined. For his most ambitious commercial designs, he made hundreds of folio designs and scores of engravings, but was paid scarcely more than twenty pounds for two or three years' work. His invention of illuminated printing lost money, and many of his greatest works, such as Jerusalem, were left unsold at his death. He came to

believe that his "business is not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes." William Blake in the Desolate Market is an investigation of Blake's labours to support himself by his arts. The changing prices of his works, his costs and receipts, as well as his patrons and employers are expertly gathered and displayed to show the material side of the artistic career in Britain's Romantic period.