Blake, William

BLAKE, William (1757-1827). Songs Of Innocence and Of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. [London:] The Author and Printer W Blake, 1789, 1794 [Frederick Tatham, c. 1832].
187 x 129mm. 42 leaves of wove paper by J. Whatman (fos. 7, 10, 34 and 39 watermarked and dated 1831, 1832). 42 RELIEF ETCHINGS, including 3 decorated titles, 2 pictorial frontispieces and 37 plates integrating Blake's poems, illustrations and decorations. Printed in grey-black ink on rectos only.
BINDING: late-19 t h -century English green roan, sides panelled with triple gilt fillets and blind roll-tooled border, spine gilt in compartments with fleurons and lettering, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, laid-paper flyleaves. Quarter morocco folding case. Provenance: Alice Parsons Millard (1873-1938, Pasadena bookseller, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright's La Miniatura), brief autograph description of the book laid in, sold to -- Caroline Boeing Poole (1884-1932, collector of native American art), whose books were not dispersed until 1977 by -- Bernard M. Rosenthal (b. 1920), sold to the Vershbows 1979.
This VERY FINE AND SUBSTANTIALLY COMPLETE COPY of Tatham's rare posthumous edition was unrecorded until 1980, when Arthur Vershbow reported it to G.E. Bentley, Jr., the author of Blake Books. Annotated Catalogues of William Blake's writings in Illuminated Printing, in Conventional Typography and in Manuscript (Clarendon Press 1977). Only a dozen other copies and some scattered plates of this issue are known and no other copy has been sold at auction in more than 30 years (copy h, Christie's NY, 22 May 1981, lot 36). Only 7 recorded copies contain more plates than the Vershbow set.
Impressions of all etchings of the combined Songs (plts. 1-54 and pl. b; pl. a had been cancelled from the first issue by Blake after only a few impressions) were pulled from Blake's original copperplates and issued in sets of varying numbers by the artist, Frederick Tatham, who was left with the contents of Blake's studio after Catherine Blake's death in 1831. This set contains plts. 1-14, 16-29, 33-36, 38-43, 46, 49, 52-53, which corresponds precisely with copy d (printed in sepia, ex-Wm. Odell Elwell-Col. W.E. Moss). They are arranged in the same order that Blake seems mostly (but not invariably) to have adopted in later years. Keynes pp. 127-128; Keynes & Wolf pp. 66-69; Bentley pp. 370-380 and 425-429.