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The English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) invented a technique he called illuminated printing.

The English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) invented a technique he called illuminated printing.

“He would write a poem backward on a copper plate with a quill pen, using an ink that was impervious to acid, and draw a design around the words,” said Joseph Viscomi, Ph.D., James G. Kenan Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Then Blake or his wife would print the plate on fine wove paper and finish the impression in watercolors, pen and ink.”

Today, Blake’s illuminated books, scattered in museums and special collections libraries, bring millions at auctions. But scholars and students the world over can study Blake’s works online thanks to the William Blake Archive, a project of three scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Rochester and the University of California, Riverside.

The creators and editors are Morris Eaves, Ph.D., English professor and Richard L. Turner Professor of Humanities at Rochester; Robert Essick, Ph.D., distinguished professor emeritus of English literature at Riverside; and UNC’s Viscomi.

“Before the archive, Blake scholars and students could read the poems in anthologies but were not necessarily aware of the myriad illustrated versions Blake created for each work,” Eaves said. “Now, this free resource is an alternative to black-and-white reproductions of Blake’s artwork in textbooks.”

Sponsored by the Library of Congress, the archive, available at http://www.blakearchive.org, has received a major boost. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently granted it $230,000, which will let the editors add another 500 digital images to the archive, Viscomi said.

The professors and teams of students at UNC and Rochester also will be able to add new features and tools to enhance the user’s experience; further their work on manuscripts and rare typographical works; prepare 20 or more illuminated books and numerous series of prints, drawings and paintings for publication; code more than 1,000 images so that they are searchable; and add 40 years’ worth of issues of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, a peer-reviewed journal based at the University of Rochester that Viscomi calls “the journal of record in Blake studies.”

Previous support allowed for the digitization of some 5,500 digital images drawn from Blake’s books, paintings, engravings, drawings, manuscripts and original prints. The archive contains exemplary and sometimes multiple copies from each printing of each book in the online collection so far, plus transcriptions, editorial notes and descriptions. The archive is searchable not only for terms in texts, but also for keywords that describe even the tiniest details of an illustration.

“Users can see the works in superb detail and accurate colors, both at true size and in enlargements,” Viscomi said. “Each copy of each book in the archive is unique, even those printed together in the same printing.”

Viscomi, who teaches in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, called the new grant “a very important and crucial expansion of our work, laying the groundwork for tackling some of Blake’s most difficult texts and enlarging the searchable database across genres.”

To be sure, the archive doesn’t own these valuable illuminated books. Rather, it acquires from the owners either transparencies of the images, which may be scanned and made into digital images, or digital images created by high-resolution cameras.

The three scholars began the project in 1993, when they asked administrators at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities to host it, Viscomi said. The first content appeared in 1996, and the site migrated to UNC servers in 2006. Also that year, Eaves created a team of graduate students at Rochester to help him edit Blake’s manuscripts. At UNC, the University Library hosts the site, and library staff work with the archive staff on its development and support.

In 2003, the archive became the first electronic collection to receive the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) Prize for a Distinguished Scholarly Edition. In 2005, it was the first to receive the approved edition seal from the MLA committee on scholarly editions.

The archive also is supported by an annual gift from a private foundation; the University of Rochester English department; and UNC’s department of English and comparative literature, College of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School. Past support came from the Getty Grant Program, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, NEH and the UVA institute.

Note: Viscomi can be reached at (919) 962-8764 and jsviscom@email.unc.edu; Eaves, at (585) 275-9025 and morris.eaves@rochester.unc.edu

Images from the archive:
Title page of “Songs of Innocence”: http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=s-inn.b.illbk.02&java=yes

Title page of “The Book of Urizen”: http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=urizen.g.illbk.01&java=yes

Photo: UNC’s Joseph Viscomi works on the William Blake Archive: http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/humanities/2010/blakeoffice-8.ps.jpg

UNC News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589
UR University communications contact: Valerie Alhart, (585) 276-3256, valhart@admin.rochester.edu

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