Symbols
| § |
Works preceded by a section mark are reported on secondhand authority |
Abbreviations
| BB |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books (1977) |
| BBS |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books Supplement (1995) |
| Blake |
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
<Blake ([year])> indicates the installment of “William Blake and His Circle” published in the year specified |
| BR(2) |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (2nd ed., 2004) |
| BSJ |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., with Keiko Aoyama, Blake Studies in Japan (1994) |
| Butlin |
Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (1981) |
| E |
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, edited by
David V. Erdman (rev. ed., 1988) |
| WBHC |
G. E. Bentley, Jr., William Blake and His Circle (2017),
library.vicu.utoronto.ca/collections/special_collections/bentley_blake_collection/blake_circle/2017/William_Blake_and_His_Circle.pdf |
Introductory Essay
The annual William
Blake checklist aims to record new editions, facsimiles, reproductions,
translations, bibliographies, biographies, scholarship, and significant digital
discussions from the last year. It is only through the kind assistance of
collaborators that this bibliography is able to list these sources from multiple
languages and to truly convey the global impact of Blake and his circle. Readers
who do not see their own languages represented here are welcome to contact me
about becoming a contributor.
In line with Blake/An
Illustrated Quarterly itself, this year’s checklist has adopted the ninth
edition of the MLA Handbook as its style guide. The two major changes
this brings are that digital links are given directly in the citation (and not
in the title of a work, as was done previously) and that other works referenced
in my introductory essay are listed in a works cited page at the end of the
essay (and not in notes). Perhaps obviously, however, when this essay cites works
that are recorded in the checklist, they are not listed in the works cited.
New Editions,
Facsimiles, and Reproductions
Tate has
published a reduced-size reproduction of copy I of The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell (printed in 1827 and held by the Fitzwilliam Museum). Sibylle
Erle, Tamsin Rosewell, and Jason Whittaker contribute an informative contextual
introduction, and the foreword is by Juliet Rylance and Mark Rylance.
A milestone for The
William Blake Archive is its first edition of Blake’s annotations, those
to Robert John Thornton’s The Lord’s Prayer (1827, held by the
Huntington Library). In line with other Blake Archive editions, it
provides a high-quality, color digital facsimile of each page that Blake
annotated and a transcription of the annotations and their revisions. The images
will allow users to appreciate the full context of the annotations (in many
cases, for the first time outside of rare-book rooms) and to witness the
interplay of Blake’s writing with the layout of the books he read. It is the
hope of the Archive’s editors that this and forthcoming editions will
generate new scholarship on the relatively neglected annotations.
The Archive
also published ten new commercial engravings. Those designed and engraved by
Blake are the frontispiece for Thomas Commins’s An Elegy, Set to Music
(1786) and the engraving published in the Christmas gift book Remember Me!
(1824). Those designed by Blake and engraved by someone else include the three
designs for Gottfried Augustus Bürger’s Leonora (1796), engraved by
the otherwise unknown Perry; the frontispiece for Benjamin Heath Malkin’s A
Father’s Memoirs of His Child (1806), engraved by Robert Cromek; the three
pages of Blake images (including “Ghost of a Flea”) in John Varley’s A
Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy (1828), engraved by John Linnell; and the
title page of John Whitaker’s The Seraph (c. 1818–28), engraved by the
otherwise unknown P. Jones.
In addition, the Archive
made available new copies of two illuminated books: copy C of The Ghost of
Abel (printed in 1822 and held by the Huntington Library) and copy A of On
Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil (printed c. 1822 and held by
the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC). It now has two of the five copies
of The Ghost of Abel and three of the five extant copies (another is
untraced) of On Homers Poetry [and] On Virgil.
Bibliographies
Also new at the Blake
Archive is A Selected Annotated Bibliography of William Blake and His
Circle: A Guide to Further Research by Wayne C. Ripley, with contributions
by Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. This work
should be understood as a digital consolidation of the three standard
bibliographies by G. E. Bentley, Jr. (Blake Books, Blake Books
Supplement, and William Blake and His Circle) and of the annual Blake
checklist since my tenure as bibliographer began (2018). It is a
substantial work of over 1,700 pages, arranged in ten categories:
I. Teaching
William Blake
II. General
Introductions, Handbooks, Glossaries, and Classic Studies
III. Editions of
Blake’s Writings
IV. Biographies
V. Bibliographies
VI. Catalogues
VII. Studies of
Blake Arranged by Subject
VIII. Specific
Works by Blake
IX. Collections of
Essays on Blake Published since 1957 (since <Blake (2018)> for
Non-English Collections)
X. Appendices (including
A. Non-English Scholarship since <Blake (2018)>; B. Major Sources
Not Recorded in BB, BBS, WBHC, or Blake; and C.
Useful Websites)
Given these
different categories, secondary texts are cross-listed, and the bibliography
includes internal links that direct users to relevant information located
elsewhere. In most cases, the annotations of older secondary texts are new, in
order to capture their relevance to the current critical moment. Links have
been provided where available, and references to a work in the standard
bibliographies or catalogues are recorded in the citation. The text of the
bibliography is fully searchable and copyable, facilitating the creation of
citations and works cited pages. It will be updated with new material from the
current checklist beginning in 2027. I am also happy to share a PDF version
upon request, and to receive any notices of errors or misrepresentations.
While a complete
description of the organization can be found in the introduction of the
bibliography (blake-frontend-grantg.apps.cloudapps.unc.edu/?page=11), I will
highlight some of the major content here. Category I, “Teaching William Blake,”
has long been desired by users of the Blake Archive, many of whom are
teachers; it contains books and essays on teaching Blake in many different
contexts, from primary school to graduate school. Category IV, “Biographies,” references
both standard and popular biographies, and lists essays with important
biographical information. Also found in this section is scholarship on
Catherine Blake and on members of Blake’s circle. To the latter, I have added
greatly to the number of secondary sources found in Bentley and in Ripley et
al., and I have divided this collection of scholarship between works focused on
Blake and the figure, and works focused on the figure alone. I have also
referenced standard editions of each person’s writings and standard, sale, and
exhibition catalogues of art.
Category VI,
“Catalogues,” includes standard catalogues for Blake (including all known
updates to Butlin’s The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake); a list
of collection catalogues (print and digital) and studies of specific
collections; and lists of major exhibition and sale catalogues. Category VII,
“Studies of Blake Arranged by Subject,” comprises twenty-two subheadings
arranged around major approaches to Blake, ranging from the general (“Art,”
“Literature,” “Music,” “Religion”) to the more specific (“Gender and Sexuality
Studies,” “Political and Historical Criticism,” “Reception Studies”). Also
included in this section are “Blake Collectors and Collections” and “Studies of
Blake Criticism.” Most of these subheadings have an introduction that lists
essays that will orientate new researchers to the subject or approach. Under “Art,”
“Literature,” and “Music,” there are also lists of scholarship organized by the
major artists, writers or publishers, and musicians who have been studied in
connection with Blake. Other subsections under “Art” include works on Blake’s
different media and artistic contexts, while other subjects under “Literature” cover
essays on Blake’s prosody and his mythology and symbolism.
Category VIII,
“Specific Works by Blake,” is organized in line with the Blake Archive, consolidating
in one location what was spread over many different standard bibliographies and
catalogues. It includes lists of all known copies of the illuminated books and
miscellaneous print impressions (including those not currently available in the
Archive); all known impressions of separate prints and prints in series;
print and digital editions of Blake’s commercial engravings (including an
updated list of known colored copies of the Night Thoughts engravings);I did not attempt to synthesize all the locations of the commercial book
illustrations that Bentley and others have compiled in different bibliographies
and catalogues. and Blake’s
manuscripts and works published in typography (including all known copies of Poetical
Sketches and A Descriptive Catalogue). Essential bibliographical
details for these works are drawn from the standard bibliographies and
catalogues, and there are consolidated lists of editions, reproductions,
facsimiles, and translations. Links to digitizations at the respective holding
institutions and to digital exhibitions are provided, as are links to catalogue
entries, if separate from digitizations.
Category IX,
“Collections of Essays on Blake,” gathers collections with three or more
essays. (Titles of collections elsewhere in the bibliography contain internal
links to this section.) Category X, “Appendices,” contains lists of non-English
sources since <Blake (2018)> arranged by language; major sources
on Blake not recorded in Bentley’s standard bibliographies; and reliable web
pages on Blake.
Exhibitions
After its recent renovation,
the Yale Center for British Art held Blake: Burning Bright, an
exhibition of Yale’s extensive collection of Blake’s works that was curated by
Elizabeth Wyckoff. The book published in conjunction with the exhibition
contains a useful essay by Sarah T. Weston on Blake’s use of color in
illuminated printing. A striking feature of the book is the juxtaposition of Sir
Jeffery Chaucer and the Nine and Twenty Pilgrims on Their Journey to Canterbury
(1808) (Butlin #653) to both the copperplate and a print of “Chaucers
Canterbury Pilgrims” (1810). Among Blake’s drawings are color
reproductions of Socrates, a Visionary Head (Butlin #714), Empress
Maud (Butlin #692), and The Gambols of Ghosts according with Their
Affections previous to the Final Judgment (Butlin #636). Commercial book
illustrations include three pages from colored copy N of Night Thoughts.
Given recent attention to William Hayley (see Division II), the color reproduction
of Blake’s pen-and-ink drawing The Entrance Front of Hayley’s House at
Eartham (Butlin #369) is worth examining.
The Art Institute
of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum held an exhibition of prints entitled Lines
of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850, which included works by
Blake. The catalogue features a new spectroscopic analysis of the Getty copy of
the large color print Satan Exulting over Eve.
Digital Sources
The sources
recorded in this section include mostly news articles, blogs, digital humanities
projects (like Lisa Gee’s HayleyWorld), and substantial talks posted to YouTube
or other video-sharing sites. Posts or talks with substantial scholarly insight
are cross-listed in Part VI of Division I. Blogs or YouTube channels largely
devoted to Blake are listed by the individual’s or institution’s name, while those
sources that happened to address Blake in 2025 are listed by the name of the author
or presenter. Remembrances of David Bindman are collated under his name, and
articles referencing Blake’s cottage in Felpham are included under the Blake
Cottage Trust. Interviews with or talks by authors of new books (like Philip
Hoare and Mark Vernon) are listed with the books in Part VI of Division I. I
have not documented references to Blake on social media, recitations of his
work, or educational videos.
The Allen Ginsberg
Project
continues to post Ginsberg’s 1979 Naropa lectures on Blake. It also documents
how Ginsberg’s parlor organ ended up at Blake’s Felpham cottage, through “the
inspired and visionary intercession of Camila Oliveira, trustee of the William
Blake Society and the Blake Cottage Trust.” The Blake Cottage Trust website has
two new videos: one is Annie Holt’s short film “Away to Sweet Felpham,” and the
other shows the installation of the new thatched roof. The BBC has two news
stories on the cottage, including Bruce Dickinson’s reaction to the renovations.
Most of the
monthly events at the Blake Society are recorded both at the society’s website
and on YouTube. In 2025, John Riordan and Tamsin Rosewell discussed the
Rossetti Manuscript (Blake’s Notebook); Annise Rogers coined the “Urizen cycle”
as a new frame for understanding Blake’s mythological system; Li Hui Tsai looked
at “The Little Black Boy” as “a critique of racial inequality”; and Mark Crosby
made the case that unattributed drawings of church memorials outside of
Westminster Abbey were executed by Blake. (Crosby delivered another address, at
the Bodleian Library, that argues that Blake executed practice engravings as an
apprentice on the versos of plates for Richard Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments;
see also his article in Blake 58.4.) Ramazan Saral revisited the
influence of Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso on Songs of
Innocence and of Experience; Matthew Leporati argued that Blake was more appreciative
of science than is popularly supposed; and Rebecca Marks read the Rosenwald Last
Judgment in relationship to Michelangelo (the article version of her talk
was published in Blake 59.3). (At her blog, Marks also used Photoshop
to imagine how Blake hung his pictures at his 1809 exhibition.) Stuart Kendall
examined Georges Bataille’s reading of Blake in post-World War II France, while
Christopher Bucklow discussed using Blake’s own tactics in thinking of the psyche.
(At the blog The Conversation, Sarah Corbett reflected on The Ghost
of a Flea in terms of processing childhood trauma.)
The Global Blake
Network’s “In Conversation” series ran from January to April 2025. It included
Ramazan Saral’s discussion of Blake and Rumi, and Jacob Smith on Blake’s
influence on the scientist and philosopher Gregory Bateson and the recently
deceased filmmaker David Lynch. (Smith also has a short “audiovisual essay”
that juxtaposes images from “Blake’s painting The Sea of Time and Space [1821]
to sounds created by Lynch and his collaborators, Alan Splet and Ann Kroeber.”)
Camille Adnot examined Blake’s practice of mirror writing and how this shaped
the designs of the illuminated books, especially in Milton and Jerusalem;
Annalise Volpone called attention to the images of partus mentis in
Blake’s writings and designs, suggesting that he “reinforces the analogy
between the womb and the brain” and offers an idea of an “embodied
imagination.”
Keri Davies generously
posted two of his unpublished talks on Blake’s family and Moravianism on his
blog, Index Rerum. The Human Divine had three posts on Blake late
in 2024, including one by Patti Smith. This WordPress blog is now posting
its material on a Substack named Golgonooza. At his blog on
fairies, John Kruse has some images of paintings by Ben Edge, including variations
of “Albion Rose” in different settings. And Sarah Jones, at Hell’s Printing
Press, interviewed the translator Hans-Ulrich Möhring.
Books
2025 saw many
books, both popular and scholarly, published on Blake. To begin with those aimed
at a popular audience, Mark Vernon’s Awake! William Blake and the Power of
the Imagination is an introductory overview of Blake’s thought that especially
highlights spiritual and religious topics. (It is in this focus that the book
differs most from John Higgs’s more secular and pop culture-infused William
Blake vs. the World [2021].) Vernon has been giving lectures and appearing
on podcasts; those related to his book are recorded under his name in Part VI
of Division I, and those unrelated are listed in Part V.
The first part of
John Riordan’s graphic-novel biography, Los: A Vision of William Blake,
is complete and now for sale on his website, and he is interviewed about the
book by Rebecca Marks at her blog, Culture Dump. Geoffrey Babbitt’s A
Grain of Sand in Lambeth is an interesting collection of poems that tell
the story of Blake’s life from his baptism and early vision of God at the
window to his death. A new edition (in Japanese) of the poet Jukichi Yagi includes
his poem “To Blake” and his translations of “Introduction” (Songs of
Innocence) and “Infant Joy.”
As noted by some
of the reviews, Philip Hoare’s William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love is
a difficult book to classify, as it is at once a personal reflection on Blake
and the sea, an examination of some of Blake’s works and key events in his
life, and a sampler of telling moments in Blake’s reception history (with
references to Derek Jarman, Paul Nash, W. Graham Robertson, and many others). These
can lead to exhilarating confluences and interesting discoveries (particularly with
regard to reception history), but Hoare rejects the typical academic
conventions of footnotes, chapter titles, and even an index that would make
navigating the different persons and topics easier. But, in the spirit of
Blake’s own call for viewers to “Enter into [his] Images” (E 560), it seems to
be Hoare’s objective that readers dive into the book and let the current of his
prose and its winding connections carry them away.
If readers need
orientation after Hoare’s book, they would do well to turn to Caroline Anjali
Ritchie’s William Blake and the Cartographic Imagination: Maps, Diagrams,
Networks, an original and insightful study that considers Blake in
relationship to mapmaking. Ritchie examines both his engagements with
Enlightenment-era cartography and how diagrams and other schema have been used
to understand (or misconstrue) his works. She traces Blake’s proximity to artists,
engravers, and publishers who made or sold maps, illustrating a rich context
for understanding his own efforts at representational mapmaking, as seen in
George Cumberland’s An Attempt to Describe Hafod (1796) and in “A
Corrected and Revised Map of the Country of Allestone” (attributed by some to
Blake as engraver) in Benjamin Heath Malkin’s A Father’s Memoirs of His
Child (1806), and she discusses his own mythic maps in Milton and Jerusalem.
But the real power of her study lies in her ability to reconfigure Blake’s
other works in relationship to mapping, such as “London,” the illustrations of
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and the illustrations of the Divine
Comedy, which made me, at least, begin to see maps in many of Blake’s works.
Jodie Marley’s William
Blake’s Mysticism: The Legacy of Prophetic Women is a significant book on
several fronts. It first aims to rehabilitate the idea of Blake as a mystic,
both in the context of his own times and in his reception in the circle of William
Butler Yeats. Secondly, it emphasizes the role of female mystics and
self-declared prophets in both of these historical contexts. Thus, Marley reads
The Book of Thel and Visions of the Daughters of Albion in
relationship to Dorothy Gott and examines many of Blake’s other works in
relationship to Joanna Southcott and gendered notions of prophecy found in
Jacob Boehme. Finally, her study of Blake’s reception in the Yeats circle
stresses the importance of gender in what has too often been described as a
vatic line of male succession from Blake to Yeats, and she documents how Blake
was received and used by George Russell (Æ), William Sharp (who wrote as Fiona
Macleod), George Yeats, and Iseult Gonne.
Silvia Riccardi’s interesting
Dark Romanticism: Literature, Art, and the Body focuses on Henry Fuseli,
Blake, and Mary Shelley, and examines their depictions of the body in
relationship to Enlightenment anatomical discourse. Her first four chapters
discuss Fuseli and Blake, highlighting their marginal position in standard
histories of Romanticism, which she ties to their unsettling use of different
media. She draws many interesting connections between Blake’s theory of the
line in relationship to his depictions of veins and fibers and new scientific
diagramming of nerves, roots, and other linear systems. Her reading of the
Dante illustrations concentrates on the depiction of bodies, and includes a
discussion of Blake’s Ugolino. Riccardi’s chapter on Fuseli also considers his
Dante illustrations and how, like Blake, he often illustrated figures of speech
rather than dramatic moments in a literary work. The concluding chapters, on Frankenstein
and anatomical representations of muscles, carry forward these themes in
Shelley’s work. The book greatly benefits from its many color reproductions of
Fuseli, Blake, and anatomical prints. Perhaps my only quibble is the paucity of
references to Mary Wollstonecraft, who seems to deserve her own chapter in the
book, given the figures she considers.
Despite its title,
Brendan McNamee’s William Blake, Jacques Derrida and the Secret Heart of
Deconstruction: The Dark Back of Time uses Blake more as a guiding spirit
than as an object of study in a book on deconstruction and spirituality. Nonetheless,
I found it more Blakean than those with many more Blake citations. It is also far
clearer and more lucid than its title and subject might suggest. (On a similar
topic, Andrew Gleeson offers poststructuralism as a balm for our current
political ills and uses Laocoön to explain “Blakean post-structural
understanding.”)
Claire
Garnier-Tardieu and Jessica Stephens have published Kathleen Raine: A Voice
for the Twenty-First Century, a collection on the Blake scholar, poet, and
theosopher. Many of the essays touch slightly on Blake; others consider Raine’s
autobiography, her poetry, her children’s books, and issues tied to translating
her poetry. (Outside of the collection, Raine’s rewriting of “London” as
“London Revisited” is the subject of an essay by
Verónica Rafaelli and Mercedes Vernet.)
Key Essays
S. Yarberry imagines
Blake’s brother Robert as a trans man in the eighteenth century, reflecting on trans
identity and their own in-progress collection, The Robert Poems. As they
write, “By using what I term a speculative transhistorical poetics, I further
suggest, this practice can powerfully reimagine the place of transness in a
past that does not always have an obvious or comfortable place for bodies that
challenge the gender binary.”
There are several
essays on Blake in the collection William Hayley: A Biographer’s Influence
on Life Writing and Romantic Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century,
edited by Lisa Gee and Mark Crosby. Jason Whittaker and Annise Rogers consider how
biographies and studies of Blake from Alexander Gilchrist’s Life (1863)
to Whittaker’s own Jerusalem: Blake, Parry, and the Fight for Englishness
(2022) have characterized Hayley. Mark Crosby positions the two editions of
Hayley’s Life of Milton in relationship to the political debates of the
1790s, with references to Blake’s America. Nicholas Shrimpton revisits
the relationship of Blake and Hayley, emphasizing Hayley’s positive influences,
and Blake is also addressed in the conversation between Alex Kidson and Morton
D. Paley that ends the book.
Michael
Phillips has an essay revising his earlier thoughts on Blake’s methods and
materials used in color printing from the early illuminated books (beginning
with the first four copies of Songs of Experience) through the
color-printed drawings (monotypes).The debate over Blake’s color-printing method began with Phillips’s William
Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing
(2000) and led to an extended exchange among Phillips, Robert N. Essick and
Joseph Viscomi, and Martin Butlin. See Essick and Viscomi, “An Inquiry into
William Blake’s Method of Color Printing”; Phillips, “Color-Printing Songs
of Experience and Blake’s Method of Registration: A Correction”; Butlin,
“‘Is This a Private War or Can Anyone Join In?’: A Plea for a Broader Look at
Blake’s Color-Printing Techniques”; and Essick and Viscomi, “Blake’s Method of
Color Printing: Some Responses and Further Observations.” Additional responses
were offered by Butlin, “William Blake, S. W. Hayter and Color Printing,” and
Essick and Viscomi, “Response.” In this new account, Phillips
contends that Blake’s method of color printing between 1793 and 1795 progressed
from one that was relatively difficult to one that was increasingly simple and
straightforward. He argues that for the most difficult plates, those combining
text and design, Blake first printed the text using an oil-based ink with a
single pass between the rollers. However, the impression was then stopped just
short of passing beyond and free of the rollers, leaving the top margin of the
sheet “pinched” and thus held in register with the plate. The impression was
carefully turned back from the plate and held against the face of the roller
(with a cloth or with the press blanket brought forward from behind the top
roller). The plate itself was held in place on the bed of the press in the
embossed “well” in the paper or pasteboards (from which it could be lifted away
and cleaned or more likely left in place) referenced in Blake’s 6 December 1795
instructions to George Cumberland.These are recorded in Cumberland’s commonplace book (see BR[2] 67). Onto
the areas of design, Blake carefully daubed his color mixes. The impression
printed in monochrome was carefully laid back down onto the plate into register
and with the tips of the fingers the colors were “printed.” The star wheel was
turned a fraction further, releasing the impression, which was then lifted away
from the plate. Lifting the impression from the plate created the impasto
effects characteristic of Blake’s color-printed designs that under
magnification appear like the surface of the moon.
If this procedure
was followed, a so-called “two-stage” printing process was possible, but one
that used only one pass of the press. This process made it possible to print
distinct areas of the plate using two very different kinds of printing material
(thin layers of oil-based ink and tacky glue-based color pigment) and
correspondingly two distinct levels of pressure, one enough to print the text
in a pass between the rollers and the other
very much less to avoid blurring, with only the slightest pressure needed to
color print the design.
Phillips
also differs from Joseph Viscomi and Robert N. Essick by reconsidering
Frederick Tatham’s claim that Blake used an oil-based binder when mixing his
colors, a claim that hitherto has been dismissed, as Tatham was not trained as
a printmaker. Color pigments mixed in a warm water-based solution such as
animal glue must be applied rapidly, as they can dry in seconds and when dry
cannot be printed. Phillips sees evidence of oil being present in Blake’s
binder in the leaching apparent on the versos and offsets of copies of the
illuminated books and color-printed separate plates and in the success of his
own experiments using the smallest amount of plate oil in mixing color pigments
for color printing. Even though chemical analysis of the color-printed drawings
has not revealed evidence of the presence of oil, Phillips maintains that
“a drop of plate oil” (which was sufficient for his experiments in keeping the
emulsion fluid) in Blake’s color prints may have been absorbed by the paper, or
in such minute quantities was mixed with “another element in the binder” and is
thus not apparent in tests. (Phillips’s essay appears in a beautiful collection on
color-printing practices in Europe; see Grasselli and Savage under Cultures and
Technologies of Display and Exhibition in Division II.)
The differently
colored copies of Blake’s “Mrs. Q” are central to the case made by the Jane
Austen scholars Rodney Yoder, Juliette Wells, and Avery Yoder-Wells, who reject
the claim that Austen saw her character Jane Bennet in the lost painting by
Jean-François Hüet-Villiers described in the catalogue as “Portrait of a Lady,”
which is believed to have been the original for “Mrs. Q.” The differently
colored copies of “Mrs. Q,” they suggest, indicate that the print cannot be seen as
representative of the painting’s colors. This is important, since Austen had
highlighted the “green ornaments” in the painting she describes. In making their case, the authors
provide much information about the 1813 exhibition of the Society of Painters
in Oil and Water Colours and about Hüet-Villiers’s career.
Louise Wilson
presents a revised version of her essay on Blake’s wood engravings for Virgil
at the National Gallery of Victoria website, which also has her account that
links the NGV Virgil impressions to the family of John Linnell. Writing in
Turkish, Emre İnan and Yaşar Uslu have an essay on printmaking and the
visualization of information that references Blake.
David Worrall
fascinatingly recounts how the Blake scholar and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, copy
J of Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and its owners, the
Rothschilds, were surveilled by MI5. Roger Whitson has an essay on the Blake
and comic-strip scholar Donald Ault and how Ault anticipated Bruno Latour’s actor-network
theory. The miscellaneous essays of Narumi Umetsu, who is known for his
translation of Blake’s works, Blake Zen Chosaku, include three on
Blake. The collected critical essays of the art critic Kenjiro Okamoto feature
Blake, and the second part of Yoshie Nakajima’s introductory essay on
Lafcadio Hearn and Blake has been published
.
In essays on
teaching, Jasper A. Cragwall explains how he uses “Rintrah” in The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell as a “defamiliarizing force.” In the Romantic Circles
volume Romanticism and Antislavery Literatures: Pedagogies and Contexts,
edited by Joselyn M. Almeida and Amelia Worsley, Alan Richardson critiques the
continued neglect by Romantic scholars of Africa and Blackness, referencing his
own essay “Colonialism, Race, and Lyric Irony in Blake’s ‘The Little Black Boy’” and the
1990 MLA session “Africa in the Romantic Imagination.” In the same collection,
Patricia A. Matthew has an essay on teaching “The Little Black Boy” and having
students engage with David Bindman’s “Blake’s Vision of Slavery Revisited.” Bruce
Gardiner discusses how Martha Nussbaum utilized children’s literature in her
classroom, focusing predominantly on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” with very
slight reference to Songs, despite the essay’s title, “‘To entertain
this Starry Stranger’: Jane Taylor, William Blake, Edward Lear, and Mem Fox in
Martha Nussbaum’s Classroom.”
In the collection Global
Bunyan and Visual Art (part of the same series as Global Milton and
Visual Art <Blake (2024)>), Camille Adnot treats Blake’s
illustrations to Bunyan in relationship to Bunyan’s Baptist theology and the
concept of embodied spirituality. (The collection as a whole is certainly worth
examining for its study of Bunyan’s impact on the visual arts from the
seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.) Paul S. Fiddes also considers the
Bunyan illustrations and what they suggest about Blake’s relationship to Baptist
theology. (As recorded in Division II, Timothy Whelan highlights many of the
Baptist connections of Samuel Palmer in his essay on Palmer’s early life, which
includes an account of Palmer’s relationship with Blake.)
Anthony Apesos
reads the sexual imagery of the Petworth Last Judgment in relationship
to A Vision of the Last Judgment and Jerusalem, with slight
references to the Moravians. Rebecca Marks argues that the Rosenwald Last
Judgment is a cartone for Blake’s lost painting, and she traces the
influence of the Gothic and Michelangelo on the elaborate drawing. (Marks also
finished her dissertation, which is a study of Blake and Michelangelo.) Milena Romero Allué considers Blake’s writhing bodies in connection
with Michelangelo and alchemic androgyny. Two of Blake’s illustrations of the
Book of Revelation are the subject of essays in Spanish: Charo Buitrón examines
The Great Red Dragon and the
Woman Clothed with the Sun: “The Devil is Come Down” and Sofía
Raier writes on The
Number of the Beast Is 666.
In a significant
essay on the development of Blake’s mythology, Christopher Z. Hobson explores
the evolution of the Eternals from the Lambeth books to Milton and Jerusalem,
seeing Blake’s changing notions of the relationship between the mundane and
spiritual worlds. In other work on Blake’s mythology, Martina
Zamparo argues that Vala should be understood with regard to the Egyptian
goddess Isis. Joshua Schouten de Jel contends that Blake’s
“idiosyncratic mythopoeic lexicon” and his neologisms (including Jerusalem’s
“warshipped,” E 167) were necessary, given his “radical agenda.” In a similar
vein, Owen Ware’s study of mythology in German and
English Romanticism has a section on why Blake needed a novel mythology to
express his ideas. Linda Freedman’s new book, The Myth of the Fall in
Nineteenth-Century Literature, includes a chapter on the Genesis Manuscript
and The Book of Urizen.
Simon Schaffer’s
“Blake’s Lawgiving, Newton’s System, Reynolds’s Justice” looks at the character
of Steelyard the Lawgiver in An Island in the Moon—who is often
associated with John Flaxman (a link about which Schaffer has some misgivings)—through
depictions of actual steelyards (weighing devices). He ties the tool’s work and
its figurations to representations on Isaac Newton’s tomb in Westminster Abbey
and in Joshua Reynolds’s design of a figure of Justice. Andrew M. Cooper’s
“Blake’s Early Tractates: Hume, Bayesianism, and Divine Analogy” reexamines
David Hume’s influence on the tractates, with important considerations of Joseph
Priestley and George Berkeley. Francesca Cauchi, “Blake’s Juxtapositional
Prosodic Method in ‘Holy Thursday’ (Innocence),” examines how the prosody
of the poem relates to its depictions of children and its critique of charity.
Aqsa Malik, Ayesha Malik, and Mariam Waheed use critical discourse theory to analyze
both versions of “The Chimney Sweeper.” An essay by Eri Kubota reads “The
Tyger” in relationship to Blake’s wider idea of “the Two Contrary States of the
Human Soul.”
Ryunosuke
Nagai’s collection has a section on the Shakespeare design Oberon, Titania,
and Puck with Fairies Dancing.
Luisa Calè’s essay in the
collection The
Unfinished Book (2021) is on extra-illustrations to Shakespeare, with discussions of John
Boydell, Lady Lucan, and Blake’s As If an Angel Dropped Down from the Clouds
(1809). Nesli Türk highlights Blake’s illustration of Melancholy for Milton’s Il
Penseroso, while Oksana Razumovskaya reconsiders the Milton designs, with
special attention to those for the Lady and Comus. Michael Sinding explores
Blake’s use of electrical imagery in Milton in a wider essay on Luigi
Galvani and Franz Anton Mesmer. Daniel Gustafsson calls attention to the notion
of kerygma in Milton, while L. J. Cooper uses Milton in
his comparison of Blake and Emily Dickinson and how they employed “‘parapoiesis,’
a conceptual-historical entanglement of paranormality and poetry.”
Vera
Serdechnaia
explores the reception of Blake and his characters in science fiction and
fantasy written by Philip José Farmer, Crawford Kilian, Philip Pullman, Ray
Nelson, J. G. Ballard, and Orson Card. Hikari Sato examines the quotations from
Blake in Kenzaburo Oe’s
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! Francesco Saracino
treats the reception of Jesus among nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon writers,
including Blake and Oscar Wilde, while Kei Nijibayashi contends that E. M.
Forster alludes to Blake in his descriptions of the relationship of Lucy and
George in A Room with a View. Mazhar Nawaz and Kausar Rasheed compare
Blake and Jalal ud-Din Rumi, arguing that where Rumi requires the self to
dissolve for union with God, Blake believes in “the expansion of human
consciousness to perceive the divine in all things.” Sabiha Erdil compares
Blake with Cibran Khalil Cibran, better known to English readers as Kahlil
Gibran. Newly published letters by John Cowper Powys to his niece contain references
to Blake. In an important essay, A. A. Gubenkova and E. M.
Lemyagova examine the role of AI in translating Blake, comparing AI
translations to those by Vladimir Mikushevich and Samuil Marshak.
Passings
Truly, “another
portion of the infinite” passed away in 2025. For nearly sixty years, David Bindman
was a central pillar in Blake and Hogarth studies, art history, and studies of
the representations of race and art’s relationship to racism and racialism. In 1966,
he published his first article, “The Dating of Blake’s Marginalia to Reynolds,”
and in 2024 he co-curated the exhibition William Blake’s Universe with
Esther Chadwick. Bindman’s life was warmly memorialized by several of the
scholars and institutions with which he worked, including Morton D. Paley, the
Courtauld, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Hutchins Center for African
and African American Research at Harvard. A collection of essays dedicated to
Bindman, Burning Bright: Essays in Honour of David Bindman (UCL Press,
2015), edited by Diana Dethloff, Tessa Murdoch, and Kim Sloan, with Caroline
Elam, contains a survey of Bindman’s career by Elam and a list of Bindman’s
publications, outside of reviews. But Bindman continued to work at his
incredible pace for the next decade, so a complete bibliography has yet to be
written.
Blakeana
“The Tyger” is alluded
to in Neige Sinno’s memoir of her sexual abuse as a child, which was published
in France in 2023 as Triste Tigre and which has now been translated into
English as Sad Tiger (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Gail Wronsky’s poetry
collection Mockingbird’s Proverbs: Poems (White Pine Press, 2025) models
its proverbs on those in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Blake’s Circle
Lisa Gee and Mark Crosby’s
William Hayley: A Biographer’s Influence on Life Writing and Romantic
Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century goes far in conveying Hayley’s
enormous importance to the Romantic era. In addition to her editorial work on
the volume, Gee has two essays and collaborates with two of the other contributors.
Her essay on her digital project, HayleyWorld (hayleyworld.space), recounts how her interests in
Hayley evolved alongside her desire to build a digital humanities project
centered on capturing the spirit of Hayley’s life writing and the way he used
literature to foster networks of connections. When accessing HayleyWorld,
users are invited into a relationship with Hayley, giving their name, choosing
topics of interest, and hearing from Hayley in letters of direct address, many
of which are first-person rewritings by Gee of Hayley’s Memoirs of the Life
and Writings of William Hayley, Esq., which is written in the third person.
Anyone looking for a more traditional digital humanities site may be frustrated
by the chattiness of HayleyWorld, which seems to block access to the real
information, but Gee captures well how chattiness and sociability are, in
many ways, the content when it comes to Hayley.
That said, HayleyWorld
can be better appreciated in light of all the new information and accounts
of Hayley in the collection. Crosby and Gee’s essay on Hayley’s relationship
with William Cowper is a much-needed contemporary revision of the friendship
that illustrates what the writers did for each other beyond Hayley’s caregiving.
Gee on Hayley’s wives and lovers provides an important study of these women
outside of Hayley’s characterization of them. In the same spirit, Francesca
Blanch-Serrat’s chapter on Eliza Hayley is a rich biographical narrative that stresses
Eliza’s writing and her own agency in her difficult relationship with William. Susan
Matthews likewise provides new information about Hayley’s son, Thomas Alphonso,
his relationship with John Flaxman and George Romney, and Hayley’s struggles in
writing his son’s memoir, which Matthews compares to Benjamin Heath Malkin’s
memoir of his own deceased son. Silvia Riccardi considers Hayley’s depictions
of and engagements with Dante, discussing Blake’s head of Dante, Thomas
Stothard, Joshua Reynolds, and the vogue of depicting Ugolino and his sons in
the late eighteenth century (see Riccardi’s Dark Romanticism for more on
this topic). Hayley’s substantial influence is demonstrated by Diana Barsham, who
describes the relationship of Hayley and Jane Austen largely in how they
influenced each other, though there is the possibility they met once; Barsham
suggests that the Hayley circle may be the basis for characters in The
Watsons. Peter Knaus, with Gee, details Hayley’s association with the
miniaturist Jeremiah Meyer and their work on adapting a German opera for the
English stage.
Romney also
features prominently in several of the essays in the collection: Morton D.
Paley details Hayley and Romney’s relationship and Romney’s paintings of
Serena, the protagonist of The Triumphs of Temper; Claudia Thomas
Kairoff looks at Anna Seward’s connection with both Hayley and Romney, highlighting
Romney’s portraits of her; and, as noted, the closing chapter transcribes a
conversation about Hayley, Romney, and Blake between Paley and Alex Kidson,
with contributions by Gee and Crosby. Outside of the Hayley collection, an
exhibition of Romney’s works was held at the Yale University Art Gallery from 28
March to 19 October 2025. Unfortunately, no catalogue was produced, but the
exhibition’s web page contains selected images of the exhibits.
Giovanna Perini
Folesani describes an unpublished letter by Joshua Reynolds dated 20 May 1785
that was found in the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence. It is written in
Reynolds’s hand from, Folesani suggests, an Italian translation of the lost
English original. The addressee is unknown, but is likely the president of the
Florentine Academy, as it thanks the academy for a gift and notifies the
recipient of two Royal Academy students who would be coming to Florence. The
new catalogue of the Rothschild Samuel Johnson collection contains a section on
Reynolds, which includes his correspondence with Johnson and early editions of
the Discourses. A Russian article considers Reynolds’s influence on the
development of classicism. Two essays on Reynolds’s portrait of the Pacific
Islander Mai were published. The first is in Leslie Primo’s book on how British
art was shaped by outside influences, The Foreign Invention of British Art,
which discusses artists from the early sixteenth century through Angelica
Kauffman in the late eighteenth century. Primo sketches Mai’s initial encounters
with James Cook and Thomas Banks and his reception in England, including William
Hodges’s portraits of him, before stressing how Reynolds’s depiction became a model
of the portrait genre in ways that occluded Mai’s identity and experiences for
an imperial context. Taking a very different point of view, Ben Pollitt reads the
portrait’s landscape in terms of Polynesian concepts of time, po and ao.
Several works were
published on Romantic-era women artists. Franny Moyle’s biography of Angelica Kauffman
and the French painter Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Mrs. Kauffman and
Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great Eighteenth-Century Women
Artists, is a useful work that, in addition to Kauffman’s relationship with
Le Brun, touches on her connections with other major artists and artistic institutions,
like Joshua Reynolds, Maria Cosway, and the Royal Academy. In the wake of Paris
Spies-Gans’s A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain
and France, 1760–1830 (2022), Moyle’s pairing of Kauffman with Le
Brun provides a case study of the lives of two of the most prominent women
artists of the day. Kauffman’s early years in London (1766–68) are the subject
of an essay by Wendy Wassyng Roworth, who provides a more detailed accounting
of the period than Moyle. Leslie Primo’s chapter on Kauffman considers how her
European origins and connections to Europe shaped the direction of late
eighteenth-century British art, and Ann Bittl’s dissertation on women
printmakers considers Kauffman in part.
Maria Cosway is
the subject of a biography by Diane Boucher, Out of the Shadows:
Rediscovering Maria Cosway, which has a foreword written by David Bindman
in February 2025. Like Moyle’s biography of Kauffman, the work discusses
Cosway’s ties to many figures in Blake’s circle. In the collection Recovering
Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures (2023), Lara Perry has a
chapter on eighteenth-century women artists that addresses Allan Cunningham’s
life of Anne Seymour Damer and Fuseli’s comments on Mary Moser. A new
collection, Thinking Women and Art in the Long Eighteenth Century: Strategic
Reinterpretations, focuses largely on Frenchwomen (including Le
Brun) and depictions of Black women, with passing references to Reynolds,
Fuseli, and Blake’s “A Surinam Planter in His Morning Dress.” It commemorates the
feminist art historian Mary D. Sheriff and contains Sheriff’s previously unpublished
essay “Women and Modes of Self-Portraiture: Fashion, Motherhood, Sensibilité.”
Ula Lukszo Klein has an article that examines the Chevalier/Chevalière d’Éon’s
“celebrity image both before and after her transition to public life as a woman.”
The Sculpture
Journal has dedicated a special issue to Westminster Abbey in the long
eighteenth century; it includes an essay on Flaxman’s monument to George
Lindsay Johnstone to consider the role played by smaller works in the space of
the abbey. In a bibliographic essay, Sandro Jung surveys scholarship published
between 1935 and 2025 on illustrations to eighteenth-century British literature,
intentionally leaving out studies on Blake and satire. Outside of its treatment
of Blake, the exhibition catalogue Lines of Connection: Drawing and
Printmaking, 1400–1850 examines the relationship of prints and
drawings in different dimensions, considering works by Albrecht Dürer, Francesco Bartolozzi, Josiah Boydell, and Fuseli.
Fuseli is the
subject of a biography by Christopher Baker, Creator of Nightmares: Henry
Fuseli’s Art and Life,
which is aimed at a popular audience and contains beautiful color
reproductions. Unfortunately, it mischaracterizes Blake’s relationship with
Fuseli, suggesting that Blake only tepidly defended Fuseli when he was attacked
in 1806 and misreading Blake’s Notebook poem with the lines “The only Man that
eer I knew / Who did not make me almost spew” (E 507) as somehow showing Blake’s
“exasperation with Fuseli.” In contrast, Silvia Riccardi’s Dark Romanticism
captures well the confluence of Fuseli’s and Blake’s visions. In her first
chapter, which also serves as her introduction, she examines Fuseli’s
depictions of the body in relationship to anatomical lectures and his
illustrations of figures of speech, drawing parallels with Blake and Mary
Shelley. Her second chapter considers these themes with regard to Fuseli’s
illustrations of Dante, with references to Flaxman’s own illustrations of Dante
and to Blake’s Laocoön and his relationship with Fuseli. An article in
Russian discusses Fuseli’s illustrations of Shakespeare, and there is a
collection of essays published in Spanish, Estudios sobre Fuseli.
Blake’s engraving “Group
of Negros, as Imported to Be Sold for Slaves” for John Stedman’s Narrative is
considered by Duco van Oostrum, who uses archival data (drawn in part from detailed
manifests at Slave Voyages, www.slavevoyages.org) to roughly identify the figures
in the print and to tell their story with “critical fabulation.” In another
direction, Jeremy Chow highlights how Stedman both “racializes insect bodies
and insectivizes blackened bodies.”
Romantic Circles has a new edition
of Erasmus Darwin’s The Loves of the Plants, edited by Tristanne
Connolly, Elizabeth Bernath, and Alana Rigby. It follows the 1790 text,
distinguishing it from Adam Komisaruk and Allison Dushane’s 2017 edition of The
Botanic Garden <Blake (2018)>, which used the 1789 edition of The
Loves of the Plants and the 1791 edition of The Economy of Vegetation
as copy texts. Ekaterina Ovcharova considers Darwin’s influence on the German
novel Nachtwachen, while Shuta Kiba examines Darwin’s vitalistic theory
of habit.
N. J. Mastro has published
Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft. Mark Canuel has an
interesting study that ties literary form to “religious orientation,” exploring
how Dissent structured Wollstonecraft’s writing. James Vigus provides a
detailed economic examination of Wollstonecraft’s reaction to Hamburg in her Letters
Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796),
while Aleksey Plotnikov considers Wollstonecraft in relationship to the
Enlightenment, pedagogy, and gendered approaches to pedagogy.
Works Cited
Bindman, David.
“Blake’s Vision of Slavery Revisited.” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol.
58, nos. 3-4, 1995, pp. 373-82. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/3817574.
———. “The Dating
of Blake’s Marginalia to Reynolds.” The Burlington Magazine, vol. 108,
Oct. 1966, p. 522. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/875161.
Butlin, Martin.
“‘Is This a Private War or Can Anyone Join In?’: A Plea for a Broader Look at
Blake’s Color-Printing Techniques.” Blake, vol. 36, no. 2, fall
2002, pp. 45-49, bq.blakearchive.org/36.2.butlin.
———. “William
Blake, S. W. Hayter and Color Printing.” Blake, vol. 36, no. 2,
fall 2002, bonus content,
bq.blakearchive.org/bonus.butlin.
Dethloff, Diana,
Tessa Murdoch, and Kim Sloan, with Caroline Elam, editors. Burning Bright:
Essays in Honour of David Bindman. UCL Press, 2015,
https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781910634189.
Essick, Robert N.,
and Joseph Viscomi. “Blake’s Method of Color Printing: Some Responses and
Further Observations.” Blake, vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2002, pp.
49-64, bq.blakearchive.org/36.2.essick.
———. “An Inquiry
into William Blake’s Method of Color Printing.” Blake, vol. 35,
no. 3, winter 2002, pp. 74-103,
bq.blakearchive.org/35.3.essick.
———. “Response.” Blake,
vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2002, bonus content,
bq.blakearchive.org/bonus.response.
Phillips, Michael.
“Color-Printing Songs of Experience and Blake’s Method of Registration:
A Correction.” Blake, vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2002, pp. 44-45,
bq.blakearchive.org/36.2.phillips.
———. William
Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing.
British Library, 2000.
Richardson, Alan.
“Colonialism, Race, and Lyric Irony in Blake’s ‘The Little Black Boy.’” Papers
on Language and Literature, vol. 26, 1990, pp. 233-48.
Division I: William Blake
Part I: Blake’s Writings
Section A: Original Editions, Facsimiles, Reprints, and Translations, including Editions of Blake’s Annotations
Annotations
Annotations to
Thornton’s The Lord’s Prayer (1827). The William Blake Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/work/bb747.
The
Ghost of Abel (1822)
The Ghost of Abel [copy C]. The
William Blake Archive, edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/abel.c.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)
The Marriage of
Heaven and Hell [copy I]. Introduced by Sibylle Erle, Tamsin Rosewell, and Jason Whittaker,
foreword by Juliet Rylance and Mark Rylance, Tate, 2025. ISBN: 9781849769983. A
reduced-size reproduction of copy I. The introduction provides useful
contextual information but is strangely silent on the edition’s transcription
practices.
On
Homers Poetry [and]
On Virgil (1822)
On Homers Poetry [and] On
Virgil [copy A]. The William Blake Archive, edited by Robert N.
Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/homer.a.
Section B: Collections and Selections
§ Anthologie
bilingue de la poésie anglaise. Edited by Paul Bensimon et al., foreword
by Bernard Brugière,
Gallimard,
2005. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 519. 2,096 pp. ISBN: 9782070113743.
A bilingual English-French anthology of poetry written in English, including
several poems by Blake.
§ La arena
en fuga. Antología del romanticismo inglés. Selected and
translated by Víctor Manuel Mendiola, Universidad Autónoma de México, 2024. 258
pp. ISBN: 9786073093347. In Spanish. An anthology of late eighteenth-century
and early nineteenth-century English poetry, including poems by Blake.
§ “Poezii
de William Blake.” Translated by Ioan Radu Văcărescu. Revista Vatra, nos.
1-2, 2025, pp. 143-44. In Romanian. “The article presents several poems by
William Blake” (abstract).
Part III: Commercial Engravings
Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors
Designed
and Engraved by Blake
Thomas
Commins, An Elegy, Set to Music (1786)
The William Blake
Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/bb444.1. A colored copy (colorist
unknown) from the collection of Robert N. Essick.
Remember
Me! ([1824])For the book’s date, see the copy information at https://blakearchive.org/copy/bb490.1.
The William Blake
Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/bb490.1. A copy from the collection
of Robert N. Essick.
Designed
by Blake and Engraved by Other Engravers
Gottfried
Augustus Bürger, Leonora (1796)
The William Blake
Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/bb440.1. Etched and
engraved by Perry.Perry’s first name is unknown. A copy from the collection of Robert N. Essick.
Benjamin
Heath Malkin,
A Father’s Memoirs of His Child (1806)
The William Blake
Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/bb482.2. Etched and
engraved by Robert H. Cromek. A copy from the Huntington Library.
John
Varley, A Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy (1828)
The William Blake
Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/bb501.1. Etched and engraved
by John Linnell; includes “Ghost of a Flea.” A copy from the collection of
Robert N. Essick.
John
Whitaker, The Seraph (c. 1818–28)
The William Blake
Archive,
edited by Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi, 2025,
blakearchive.org/copy/bb512.1. Etched and
engraved by P. Jones. A copy from the collection of Robert N. Essick.
Part IV: Bibliographies and Catalogues
Section A: Bibliographies
[cross-listing articles with substantial bibliographical content]
Calè, Luisa.
“Blake and Exhibitions, 2024.” See Blake 59.2 in
Part VI.
Oliveira, Camila.
“Blake and Music, 2024.” See Blake 59.1 in
Part VI.
Ripley, Wayne C.,
with contributions by Fernando
Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. A Selected
Annotated Bibliography of William Blake and His Circle: A Guide to Further
Research. The William Blake Archive, edited by Robert N. Essick and
Joseph Viscomi, 2025, blake-frontend-grantg.apps.cloudapps.unc.edu. A large (1,766
pp.) selected and annotated bibliography of primary works by and secondary
works on Blake, created for the digital environment. In scope, it documents
material dating from Blake’s lifetime to 2024. This material includes the most
essential secondary sources recorded by the standard bibliographies of G. E.
Bentley, Jr., and most of these have been newly annotated.
It includes links
to digitizations of many of Blake’s works at the holding institutions and to
their catalogue entries, as well as other print and digital facsimiles,
reproductions, editions, and translations. Key descriptions have been drawn
from standard catalogues and descriptive bibliographies. The bibliography is
fully searchable and contains internal links directing users to relevant
content. Members of Blake’s circle are also given substantial representation,
with both primary and secondary works recorded.
The bibliography
will be updated annually to remain current. Errors and oversights can be sent
to
wripley@winona.edu for correction in
subsequent editions. I am also happy to share the PDF version upon request.
Ripley, Wayne C., with
Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. “William
Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2024.” See Blake
59.1 in Part VI.
Section B: Catalogues
Adam, Edina, and
Jamie Gabbarelli, with Victoria Binder, Mary Broadway, Drew Lash, and Stephanie
Schrader. Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850. Getty
Publications, 2025, pp. 191-95, 205-07. ISBN: 9781606069653. The catalogue for
the exhibition held at the Art Institute of Chicago from 15 Mar. to 1 June and
at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from 1 July to 14 Sept. 2025.
It discusses Blake as a hybrid printmaker, referencing both his relief and intaglio
work and his large color prints. America copy O, pl. 8; Innocence copy
B, pl. 3; Innocence copy L, pl. 3; and two copies of Satan Exulting over
Eve (Butlin #291, 292) are reproduced. There is also a new spectroscopic
analysis of the Getty copy of Satan Exulting over Eve. See also Cultures and
Technologies of Display and Exhibition in Division II for the book’s wider
scope.
Part V: Digital Resources
The Allen Ginsberg
Project,
allenginsberg.org
The site continues
to publish Ginsberg’s 1979 Naropa lectures. The first entry of 2025 is “Blake,”
10 Feb. 2025, allenginsberg.org/2025/02/m-f-10-2, and the final is
“Ginsberg on Blake 1979—7,” 23 Dec. 2025, allenginsberg.org/2025/12/t-d-23.
Banerjee, Preetha.
“William Blake’s Ecological Vision: Nature’s Paradise amid Industrial Chaos.” The
Hobbledehoy, 19 Apr. 2025, thehobbledehoy.com/category/william-blake.
BARS Blog, www.bars.ac.uk/blog
Wilcockson, Amy.
“BARS Stephen Copley Research Award Report: Jake Elliott on William Blake
Visualising London,” 24 Apr. 2025, www.bars.ac.uk/blog/?p=5952. Highlights his
experience looking at the manuscript of An Island in the Moon in
relationship to Songs of Innocence.
Bindman, David (Remembrances)
Courtauld. 22 Aug.
2025, courtauld.ac.uk/news-blogs/2025/david-bindman-1940-2025. “In everything
he did, David combined a sense of warmth, kindness and wit. His work was rooted
in an abiding passion for objects and artworks themselves. To younger scholars
he was tremendously generous and supportive, and his intellectual curiosity and
liveliness remained undimmed. We celebrate his magnificent career and mourn a
great loss to the art historical community.”
Dethloff, Diana. The
Walpole Society, 17 June 2025, www.walpolesociety.ac.uk/post/professor-david-bindman-1940-2025. “David will be
remembered as an inspiring teacher, supervisor and mentor who offered
encouragement, constructive feedback and wise counsel. He will also be
remembered for his real gift for friendship, for his kindness and generosity
and, not least, for his infectious and irrepressible sense of humour. Everyone
who knew David will be deeply saddened by his death; we will all miss him very
much.”
Hutchins Center
for African and African American Research. 3 June 2025, hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/news/2025/06/david-bindman-1940-2025. “David was the
foundational force behind the landmark Image of the Black in
Western Art publication series, serving as co-editor of 13 volumes,
with two others underway at the time of his passing.”
Paley, Morton D. See
Blake 59.1 in Part VI.
Syson, Luke. Apollo, 12 June 2025, apollo-magazine.com/david-bindman-obituary-fitzwilliam-british-museum-french-revolution-william-blake.
Turner, Sarah
Victoria. Paul Mellon Centre, 3 June 2025, www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/about/news/david-bindman-19402025/page/3. “Many people at
[the Paul Mellon Centre], past and present, have been touched by his
scholarship and his commitment to the discipline, his generous, collaborative
spirit, kindness and good humour. He will be greatly missed.”
[University
College London] Social and Historical Sciences. 11 June 2025, www.ucl.ac.uk/social-historical-sciences/news/2025/jun/david-bindman-1940-2025. “David was
without doubt one of the most distinguished art historians of his generation.… Generations
are indebted to David’s scholarship, his teaching, and to his leadership, but
we will also remember his kindness, his wit, and his humanity. The UCL History
of Art Department would not be what it is without David, and we are deeply
grateful to him.”
Yale Center for
British Art, britishart.yale.edu/news-and-press/remembering-david-bindman. “David will be
remembered for his thoughtful scholarship, inspirational teachings, and lasting
impact on British art history, as well as his enthusiasm, dedication, and good
nature. He will be deeply missed by all who worked with and learned from him.”
The Blake Cottage
Trust, www.blakecottage.org
The trust has a
newsletter, www.blakecottage.org/news/newsletters.
Holt, Annie. “Away
to Sweet Felpham: Rediscovering the Radical Blake.” A film about Blake and his
cottage. Embedded at the trust site,
www.blakecottage.org/william-blake, or available on YouTube,
uploaded by Ahania, 19 June 2024,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnMAwiZscrU.
“The New Blake
Cottage Roof, September 2025.” drive.google.com/file/d/18_OiL1Jho_o-MEC46jlxEJnlIoYMQlx9/view. An embedded MP4
video at the trust site, showing the installation of the roof.
News about the cottage
Askew, Joshua.
“New Funding to ‘Save’ William Blake’s Cottage.”
BBC, 18 Apr. 2025,
www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5qezedn2ro.
Pike, Danny, and
Hsin-Yi Lo. “Rock Star’s Delight at William Blake Cottage Revamp.”
BBC,
15 Dec. 2025,
www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj69w51j7y0o. Gives the
comments of Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden.
The Blake Society,
www.blakesociety.org (Vala, the
Blake Society journal, was not published this year.)
Events:
Riordan, John, and
Tamsin Rosewell. “AGM and the Rossetti Manuscript.” 29 Jan. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/agm-rosetti-manuscript. “After its
recent publication in beautiful facsimile by SP Books, John Riordan and
Tamsin Rosewell, two of The Blake Society’s trustees, and both illustrators,
will be discussing the notebook of William Blake known as The Rossetti
Manuscript.”
Rogers, Annise.
“The Urizen Cycle.” 26 Feb. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/urizen-cycle. “Annise Rogers
discusses Blake’s central character Urizen, and proposes ‘the Urizen Cycle’ as
a new way of understanding his mythological system.”
Tsai, Li Hui.
“Close Reading Event: ‘The Little Black Boy.’” 22 Mar. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/the-little-black-boy. “Li Hui Tsai
examines William Blake’s poem, ‘The Little Black Boy,’ as a critique of racial
inequality.”
Crosby, Mark.
“‘Some mornings Blake drank his coffee by the tomb of Edward the Confessor.’”
23 Apr. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/coffee-tomb. Crosby argues that
Blake made illustrations, which are currently unattributed, of memorials in churches
other than Westminster Abbey.
Saral, Ramazan. “The
Influence of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso on Songs of Innocence
and of Experience.” 21 May 2025, blakesociety.org/product/lallegro-il-penseroso. “Ramazan Saral
will explore the influence of Milton’s L’Allegro and Il
Penseroso on Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.”
Leporati, Matthew.
“The Urizen-Haunted World: Reconciling Blake and Science.” 25 June 2025, blakesociety.org/product/urizen-haunted-world. “Matthew will
suggest in his presentation that a careful look at Blake’s body of work reveals
a much more nuanced approach to questions of science and truth than readers
usually attribute to him.”
Marks, Rebecca. “The
Last Judgement: Blake’s Lost History Painting.” 23 July 2025, blakesociety.org/product/last-judgement. “Marks will
reconstruct what Blake’s Last Judgment might have looked like, and
consider how that reconstruction might change how we think about Blake as a
cultural figure.” (See also her essay on this topic in Blake 59.3.)
“Meeting at
Blake’s Grave.” 16 Aug. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/blakes-grave-2025. The event was
not recorded.
Hoare, Philip. “Philip
Hoare—William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love.” 10 Sept. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/philip-hoare. “Hoare traces
the enduring legacy of William Blake and how he came to inspire so many
creative lives.”
Kendall, Stuart.
“Infinite Liberty: Georges Bataille Reading Blake in Postwar France.” 8 Oct.
2025, blakesociety.org/product/infinite-liberty. “This lecture
will recall this all-but-forgotten moment in the reception of Blake’s work
among poets and philosophers in postwar France.”
Bucklow,
Christopher. “Using Blake—Christopher Bucklow.” 19 Nov. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/using-blake-christopher-bucklow. “This talk is
about adopting the tactics that Blake employed in his ‘mental fight.’ … I have
used those same tactics in order to think about the nature of the personal
psyche.”
“Celebrating Blake
at the Ivy!” 25 Nov. 2025,
blakesociety.org/product/ivy. “The Ivy Soho
Brasserie will host a special dinner to celebrate the birthday of William
Blake, including a talk from Blake Society secretary, Stephen Pritchard.” The
event was not recorded.
“The Westbrook
Blake.” 20 Dec. 2025, blakesociety.org/product/westbrook-blake-2. “Blake Society
Patrons Mike and Kate Westbrook bring the Mike Westbrook Band & Singers to
London’s Blackheath. William Blake’s poetry has run like a Golden Thread
through the music of Mike Westbrook for over 50 years. His acclaimed settings
of Blake’s visionary poetry continue to resonate powerfully with modern
audiences.” The event was not recorded.
Corbett, Sarah.
“William Blake’s Painting The Ghost of a Flea Speaks to Processing
Childhood Trauma.” The Conversation, 19 Aug. 2025, theconversation.com/william-blakes-painting-the-ghost-of-a-flea-speaks-to-processing-childhood-trauma-234131.
Crosby, Mark.
“William Blake: How Scanning Revealed Blake’s Earliest Known Engravings.” YouTube,
uploaded by Bodleian Libraries, 19 Feb. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGEcMpAbqEU. A presentation
laying out Crosby’s discovery of what are almost surely Blake’s apprentice
practice engravings on the versos of plates for Richard Gough’s Sepulchral
Monuments.See Mark Crosby, “‘Unentangled in the intricate windings of modern practice’:
William Blake’s Apprentice Copperplates and Engravings,” https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.375 <Blake
(2025)>. The images of the scans are worth seeing.
Davies, Keri. Index
Rerum: A Blog about Books, Book-Collecting, William Blake, and Lots of Other
Things, keridavies.blogspot.com
Dowdell, Dick.
“William Blake’s Warning to Today’s Divided America.” Medium, 29 Sept.
2025, medium.com/the-political-prism/william-blakes-warning-to-today-s-divided-america-79eb2ba65991. “The duty of
every citizen now is to strike at the chains—fear, cynicism, apathy—that keep
us divided, and to rebuild the imaginative covenant that first made us
Americans. That, Blake would say, is how we keep both the nation’s body and its
soul intact.”
Gee, Lisa. HayleyWorld,
hayleyworld.space. See Gee under Hayley
in Division II.
Global Blake NetworkLinks to the Global Blake site are no longer valid. I have therefore linked,
where possible, to content that has been uploaded to the Zoavision YouTube
channel.
Marley, Jodie. Review
of William Blake’s Visions: Art, Hallucinations, Synaesthesia, by David
Worrall. 16 Jan. 2025. “Overall, Blake’s Visions is a
much-needed intervention in ongoing attempts to define Blake’s visions.”
“In Conversation” series:
Saral, Ramazan.
“Wedding with Eternity: Death in the Poetry of Blake and Rumi.” YouTube,
uploaded by Zoavision, 26 Jan. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-ZV7DFV0A8.
Smith, Jacob. “William
Blake, Gregory Bateson, and David Lynch: Audiovisual Approaches to Blake
Scholarship.” YouTube, uploaded by Zoavision, 6 Feb. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmblWiY5oto.
Adnot, Camille.
“Mirror Writing and Mirror Designing in William Blake’s Illuminated Books.” YouTube,
uploaded by Zoavision, 8 Mar. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjytjA5eIYQ.
Volpone, Annalise.
“Imagination and the Pregnant Mind in William Blake’s Cosmogony.” YouTube,
uploaded by Zoavision, 3 May 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I_Lglu8Cf8.
Hoare, Philip.
“Was William Blake, One of England’s Greatest Poets, Actually Irish?” The
Irish Times, 30 Apr. 2025, irishtimes.com/culture/books/2025/04/30/was-william-blake-irish. Behind a
paywall.
Inspiraggio.
“William Blake: The Man Who Painted the Occult.” YouTube, 10 Aug. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV973v_mpNM.
Jones, Lauren. “What
Were William Blake’s Greatest Achievements?” The Collector, 1 Sept.
2025, thecollector.com/william-blake-greatest-achievements. A blog overview.
Kruse, John.
“Folklore Activism: The Art of Ben Edge.” British Fairies: A Site Studying
and Discussing British Fairy Lore, 20 Nov. 2025, britishfairies.wordpress.com/tag/william-blake. A blog post on
the exhibition of folk art at the Fitzrovia Chapel highlighting Edge’s paintings
Children of Albion, which features an image of “Albion Rose” on the
horizon behind a surreal cityscape, and Rollright Stones, which has the
same Blakean image on the horizon behind a stone circle.
Marks, Rebecca. “Drawing
William Blake: Interview with John Riordan, Graphic Novelist.” The Culture
Dump, 1 July 2025, culturedump.substack.com/p/drawing-william-blake. On Riordan’s
relationship to Blake and his graphic-novel biography, Los: A Vision of
William Blake.
Marks, Rebecca. “William
Blake’s Big Failure: When a Solo Art Exhibition Goes Wrong.” The Culture
Dump, 22 July 2025, culturedump.substack.com/p/william-blakes-big-failure. An interesting Photoshopped
re-creation of some of Blake’s pictures in his 1809 exhibition.
McCauley, Al.
“William Blake’s Elohim Creating Adam.” YouTube, uploaded by Fish
on Fridays, 12 Sept. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB16IP0irL4. A comparison of
Blake’s work with Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam from the Sistine
Chapel.
Pantheon
Mythology. “The Madman Who Saw God.” YouTube, 15 Sept. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6CwexiUdI.
Smith, Jacob.
“David Lynch Presents William Blake’s The Sea of Time and Space.” Zeitschrift
für Medienwissenschaft, no. 4, 10 Feb. 2025, zfmedienwissenschaft.de/en/online/videography-blog/david-lynch-presents-william-blake. In German and
English. “To explore the resonance between these two artists I have created an
audiovisual essay that combines images from Blake’s painting The Sea of
Time and Space (1821) with sounds created by Lynch and his
collaborators, Alan Splet and Ann Kroeber.”
Review
Tebourski, Ines.
See
Blake 59.3.
Stoszkowski, John.
“William Blake and the Sacred Power of Imagination: A Creative Revolution of
the Soul.” Syntropology, 31 July 2025, www.syntropology.com/p/william-blake-and-the-sacred-power.
Tweedy, Rod. Golgonooza,
golgonooza.substack.com
Tweedy, Rod. The
Human Divine, thehumandivine.org
Vernon, Mark. “Heisenberg
Meets William Blake.” 7 Oct. 2025, iai.tv/articles/heisenberg-meets-william-blake-the-danger-of-sciences-single-vision-auid-3379.
Vernon, Mark. “The
Philosophy of William Blake.” Philosophy Now, Dec. 2025, philosophynow.org/issues/171/The_Philosophy_of_William_Blake.
Vernon, Mark. “Why
We Should Reacquaint Ourselves with William Blake.” Merion West, 30 Aug.
2025, www.merionwest.com/why-we-shoulreacquaint-ourselves-with-william-blake.
Vernon, Mark. “William
Blake: The Christian Mystic Who Speaks to Us Now.” YouTube, uploaded by Westminster
Abbey, 20 June 2025, www.youtube.com/live/JvRkFvybwT0.
The William Blake
Archive
Part VI: Criticism, Biography, and Reviews
A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z
A
Adam, Edina, with
Julian Brooks, and an essay by Matthew Hargraves. William Blake: Visionary.
J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020. <Blake (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025)>
Review
Billingsley,
Naomi. See Billingsley.
Adnot, Camille.
“Blake’s Illustrations to The Pilgrim’s Progress and Embodied
Spirituality.” Global Bunyan and Visual Art, edited by Angelica Duran
and Katherine Calloway, Bloomsbury, 2025, pp. 159-83. ISBN: 9781669660792. A
detailed reading of the Bunyan illustrations, highlighting Blake’s
disagreements with Bunyan. “Like a rogue pilgrim, Blake takes one of the
crooked ways opened by Bunyan’s text and follows where it leads. His
illustrations are the material result of his journey and may bring readers to
venture on their own crooked ways” (180).
Adnot, Camille.
“Mirror Writing and Mirror Designing in William Blake’s Illuminated Books.” See
Global Blake Network in Part V.
Akhrorovna,
Sadullaeva Matluba. “Exploring the Role of Numbers in William Blake’s Visionary
Works.” Journal of Scientific Research, Modern View and Innovations,
vol. 1, no. 2, 2025, pp. 191-94, spaceknowladge.com/index.php/JOISRMVI/article/view/1190/1153. A brief reading
of numbers in Blake’s works, though many of the examples are not from Blake.
Albinus, Lars. Review
of Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, by Timothy Morton. See
Morton.
Apesos, Anthony. “Blake’s
Petworth House Last Judgment and Female Anatomy.” Death, Disease and
Mystical Experience in Early Modern Art, edited by Michael Hill and
Jennifer Milam, Routledge, 2025, pp. 333-49,
https://doi.org/10.5117/9789463729185_CH15. ISBN:
9789463729185. A persuasive reading of the sexual imagery of the Petworth Last
Judgment (Butlin #642) in relationship to representations of female genitalia,
Blake’s ideas of the Last Judgment in A Vision of the Last Judgment
(which Apesos refers to as “the Description”—see his note 5) and Jerusalem,
and the Moravians.
B
Babbitt, Geoffrey.
A Grain of Sand in Lambeth. U of Nevada P, 2025. ISBN: 9781647792053. A
poetic biography of Blake.
Belіns'ka, Іrina,
Tamіla Kotovs'ka, and Іrina Stets'ko. “Vіl''yam Bleyk v retseptivnomu ta
perekladats''komu kontinuumі [William Blake in the Reciprocal and Translative
Continuum].”
Vіsnik nauki ta osvіti [Bulletin of Science and Education], no. 6,
2025, pp. 75-88, perspectives.pp.ua/index.php/vno/article/view/26011/25985. In Ukrainian
(abstract in Ukrainian and English). “It has been found that the study of William
Blake’s legacy in the Ukrainian literary and critical stream is characterized
by a few scientific investigations that intensified at the end of the 20th and the
beginning of the 21st centuries and a small number of translations are
available” (abstract).
Bennett, Bridget. “Mobile
Moravians and British Antislavery.” Antislavery in the Dissenting Atlantic:
Archives and Unquiet Libraries, 1776–1865, by Bennett, Louisiana
State UP, 2025, pp. 163-211. ISBN: 9780807183717. In a book about the transatlantic
abolitionist movement, this chapter highlights Moravian activity, focusing
especially on the Yorkshire Moravians, including James Montgomery (192-95). The
last section of the chapter is titled “William Blake, John Stedman, and the
Moravians.” It stresses Blake’s mother’s Moravian links alongside the slave
narrative of Mary Prince, and it quickly surveys intersections of Blake and Stedman
with the abolitionist movement, touching briefly on Joseph Johnson, Henry
Fuseli, Jonathan Spilsbury, and James Gillray.
Billingsley,
Naomi. “Recent Publications on the Art of William Blake.” Religion and the
Arts, vol. 29, 2025, pp. 371-81,
https://doi.org/10.1163/15685292-02903004. A review of Edina
Adam et al., William Blake: Visionary; Jason Whittaker, Divine Images:
The Life and Work of William Blake; and Joseph Viscomi, William Blake’s
Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings.
Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly
Volume 58, number 4 (spring 2025)
News
Paley, Morton D.
“Our New Co-Editor.” https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.381. Announcing that
Tilar J. Mazzeo has joined Blake as the new co-editor.
Articles
Crosby, Mark.
“Blake in the Marketplace, 2024.” 9 pars., plus listings,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.385. Major sales
include Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy J (along with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s commentary in an 1818 letter to Charles Tulk); a newly
discovered preparatory drawing for Thomas Commins’s An Elegy, Set to Music
(reproduced); a 2 July 1826 letter from Blake to John Linnell (reproduced and
transcribed); and an unrecorded proof of “Robin Hood and Clorinda” (also
reproduced).
Cauchi, Francesca.
“Blake’s Juxtapositional Prosodic Method in ‘Holy Thursday’ (Innocence).”
11 pars., https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.379. A reading of the
poem that argues that its prosody “brings sharply into focus the tension
between institutionalized charity and the well-being of the young charges”
(par. 11).
Reviews
Oliveira, Camila. Jerusalem:
Blake, Parry, and the Fight for Englishness, by Jason Whittaker. 12 pars.,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.380. “[A]n
indispensable book for Blake scholars and all those interested in understanding
the recent history of England told through the reception of its most popular
anthem” (par. 12).
Leporati, Matthew.
Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake, by Jason Whittaker. 11
pars., https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.382. “Frequently
while reading the book, I thought how excellent it would be as a text for an
undergraduate or graduate seminar.… A book like Divine Images would
greatly enrich the classroom, as well as any reader’s understanding of Blake’s
art” (par. 11).
Rubel, William
Ilan. Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, by Timothy Morton. 18
pars., https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.386. “What may look
like a sales pitch to the cult of personality proves to be a brilliant
exploration of Blake’s relevance to the climate emergency” (par. 5).
Saral, Ramazan. William
Blake’s Divine Love: Visions of Oothoon, by Joshua Schouten de Jel. 8 pars.,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.383. “Overall, William
Blake’s Divine Love offers a potentially significant argument; however, it
fails to fully realize that potential, perhaps because of too many questions
that surpass the scope of the book” (par. 8).
Volume 59, number 1 (summer 2025)
Remembrance
Paley, Morton D.
“Memories of David Bindman.” https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.389. On the late art
historian and Blake scholar.
Articles
Ripley, Wayne C., with
Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. “William
Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2024.” 29 pars., plus listings,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.390.
Oliveira, Camila.
“Blake and Music, 2024.” 5 pars., plus listings,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.388.
Review
Calè, Luisa. Blake
e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno, La Reggia di Venaria, 31 Oct.
2024–2 Feb. 2025; Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno,
edited by Alice Insley. 18 pars.,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.391. Contains many
photos of the exhibition.
Volume 59, number 2 (fall 2025)
Articles
Hobson,
Christopher Z. “Who Are Blake’s Eternals?” 61 pars.,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.397. A careful
examination of these mysterious characters and their evolution between Urizen
and Jerusalem. “Finally, we should understand that in Milton and Jerusalem (with
a few suggestions in The Four Zoas), Blake dismantles much of what
he built in Urizen and The Four Zoas. While
maintaining his two-level universe, he places Eternal beings under a duty of
care for and aid to mortal humans (‘duly every morn / We visit him’; ‘labour
well the teeming Earth’) and he specifies the presence of living human beings
in divine assemblies and their ability to view Eternal reality (‘In every bosom
a Universe expands’)” (par. 53).
Calè, Luisa.
“Blake and Exhibitions, 2024.” 4 pars., plus listings,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.396. Major
exhibitions recorded include William Blake’s Universe, held at the
Fitzwilliam Museum; William Blakes Universum, held at the Hamburger
Kunsthalle; and Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno, held
at La Reggia di Venaria, Turin.
Schaffer, Simon.
“Blake’s Lawgiving, Newton’s System, Reynolds’s Justice.” 27 pars.,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.395. Recontextualizes
the association of Island’s Steelyard the Lawgiver with John Flaxman by
stressing the literal and figurative meanings of an actual steelyard (par. 2);
includes discussion of the steelyard depicted in relief on Isaac Newton’s
Westminster Abbey monument and Joshua Reynolds’s design of Justice for a window
of the chapel of New College, Oxford.
Volume 59, number 3 (winter 2025–26)
Article
Marks, Rebecca. “‘A
History of Art & Science’: William Blake’s Last Judgment.” Pp. 3-19,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.411. Arguing that the
Rosenwald Last Judgment (Butlin #645) should be considered a cartone
for Blake’s lost Last Judgment painting, she considers Blake in the tradition
of history painting, focusing on the influences of both the Gothic and
Michelangelo on the design.
Reviews
Tebourski, Ines. Bateson’s
Alphabet: The ABCs of Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind, by Jacob Smith; “David
Lynch Presents William Blake’s The Sea of Time and Space,” by Smith. Pp.
20-22, https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.407.
Oliveira, Camila. Britten’s
Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs, by Gordon Cameron Sly. Pp. 23-25,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.409. “While Britten’s
Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs represents an unquestionable contribution to
reception studies of Blake in music, it is definitely a much more accessible
book for a musician interested in literary studies than vice versa” (25).
Flores Moreno,
Cristina. Weaving Tales: Anglo-Iberian Encounters on Literatures in English,
edited by Paula García-Ramírez, Beatriz Valverde, Angélica Varandas, and Jason
Whittaker. Pp. 26-28, https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.410. “Grounded in a solid
knowledge of Blake’s works and Blakean scholarship, both chapters [on Blake] prove
invaluable in showing that he resists a fixed and unique interpretation” (28).
Paley, Morton D. William
Blake’s Manuscripts: Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests, edited by Mark
Crosby and Josephine A. McQuail. Pp. 29-33,
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.412. “It is an
admirably multi-pronged exposition, bringing together a variety of scholarly
approaches in rich combination” (33).
Buitrón, Charo.
“El dragon que no fue.” Cuadernos de arte, no.
2, 2025, pp. 33-39. In Spanish. On Blake’s watercolor The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun: “The
Devil is Come Down” (c. 1805) (Butlin #520).
Burkett, Andrew. Review
of Eternity in British Romantic Poetry, by Madeleine Callaghan. See
Callaghan.
C
Calè, Luisa.
“Blake and Exhibitions, 2024.” See Blake 59.2.
Calè, Luisa.
“Remade.” The Unfinished Book, edited by Alexandra Gillespie and Deidre
Lynch, Oxford UP, 2021, pp. 370-83. Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to
Literature. ISBN: 9780198830801. On extra-illustrations, with discussions of
John Boydell’s Shakespeare, Lady Lucan’s extra-illustrated Shakespeare made for
Earl Spencer, and Blake’s As If an Angel Dropped Down from the Clouds
(1809) (Butlin #547.6), an illustration of a line from Henry IV, Part 1.
Calè, Luisa. Review
of Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno. See Blake
59.1.
Callaghan,
Madeleine. “‘All is done as I have told’: Blake’s Eternal Prophecy.” Eternity
in British Romantic Poetry, by Callaghan, Liverpool UP, 2022. <Blake (2023,
2025)>
Review
Burkett, Andrew.
European
Romantic Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2025, pp. 167-71,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2025.2454784.
Castellano, Katey.
“Maroon Settlements as Abolitionist Commons: Nanny of the Maroons, R. C.
Dallas’s History of the Maroons, and J. G. Stedman’s Narrative of a
Five Years’ Expedition.” Robert Wedderburn, Abolition, and the Commons,
by Castellano, Cambridge UP, 2025, pp. 101-22. “Stedman’s narrative and Blake’s
engravings resonate with Wedderburn’s insistence that the Maroons cultivated
viable sustainable counter-planation societies as an alternative to plantation
capitalism” (103). Discussing Blake’s engraving “Family of Negro Slaves from
Loango,” she adds, “Blake’s engraving, notably, did not depict a benevolent
enslaver but rather a representation of food sovereignty, which … drew direct
associations between food superabundance, physical health, and independence for
European colonial logics” (120).
Cauchi, Francesca.
“Blake’s Juxtapositional Prosodic Method in ‘Holy Thursday’ (Innocence).”
See Blake 58.4.
Chadwick, Esther.
“Blake’s Millennium.” The Radical Print, by Chadwick, Paul Mellon
Centre for Studies in British Art, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Reviews
Poirier,
Marie-Lise.
RACAR: Revue d’art canadienne/Canadian Art Review, vol. 50,
no. 1, 2025, pp. 146-48.
JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/48839759. In French.
“Print Culture of
Critique.”
Antiques: The Magazine, vol. 191, no. 6, 2024, p. 74.
Cogan, Lucy. Blake
and the Failure of Prophecy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. <Blake
(2022, 2023)>
Review
Elliott, Jake.
The
BARS Review, no. 60, 2024,
www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview/article/view/386. “Ultimately,
Cogan’s nuanced readings of Blake’s works through the lens of biblical prophecy
allows [
sic] us to trace moments of conflict and change throughout his
oeuvre, while remaining alert to Blake’s continuing understanding of his work
as manifesting the ‘performative capacity of prophecy’ (3).”
Conley, Tom. Review
of William Blake and the Cartographic Imagination: Maps, Diagrams, Networks,
by Caroline Anjali Ritchie. See Ritchie.
Cooper, Andrew M.
“Blake’s Early Tractates: Hume, Bayesianism, and Divine Analogy.” European
Romantic Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2025, pp. 71-96, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2025.2454553. “Blake sides
with Hume in attacking rational theism and the theory of Divine Analogy while
yet upholding miracles, anthropomorphism, and a less restrictive theory of
induction than Hume’s. In the tractates, enthymemes, false syllogisms, and non
sequiturs not only satirize logical necessity but temporalize the steps in
Blake’s propositional sequences by inducing double takes and intervals of
hesitation” (abstract). The essay also addresses Joseph Priestley and George
Berkeley at length.
Cooper, L. J. “Parapoiesis:
William Blake and Emily Dickinson’s Redemptive Otherworldliness.” ELH,
vol. 92, no. 2, summer 2025, pp. 323-51. Project Muse,
https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2025.a961791. “Through a
comparative analysis of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, this article
outlines several dimensions of ‘parapoiesis,’ a conceptual-historical
entanglement of paranormality and poetry” (abstract). Cooper argues against M.
H. Abrams’s conception of the supernatural, and Milton is the subject of
his most extended analysis.
Cousin,
Barbara. “‘Enter into these Images’: regard augmenté sur le monde
naturel de William Blake.” XVII-XVIII. Revue de la Société d’études
anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, vol.
82, 2025, 39 pars., https://doi.org/10.4000/15ffi. In French (abstract
in French and English). Cousin discusses how new immersive technologies could help
users to “manipulate” Blake’s images to “reveal ‘the infinite which was hid’”
(abstract).
Cragwall, Jasper
A. “Rintrah’s Swagger: On Not Understanding Blake’s Argument.” The
Explicator, vol. 84, no. 1, 2026, pp. 43-47, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2025.2540918. A thoughtful
account of teaching Marriage through a focus on the inexplicability of “Rintrah”:
“Most of [the students] are native English speakers, and so the defamiliarizing
force on a language they know fluently needs to be savored. Poetry can make
them feel a vulnerability, an alienation from sense-making capacities that can
feel particularly disarming for smart people” (43).
Crosby, Mark.
“Blake in the Marketplace, 2024.” See Blake 58.4.
Crosby, Mark.
“‘Some mornings Blake drank his coffee by the tomb of Edward the Confessor.’”
See Blake Society in Part V.
Crosby, Mark.
“William Blake: How Scanning Revealed Blake’s Earliest Known Engravings.” See
Crosby in Part V.
Crosby, Mark, and
Josephine A. McQuail, editors. William Blake’s Manuscripts: Praxis,
Puzzles, and Palimpsests. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. <Blake
(2025)>
Reviews
Paley, Morton D.
See
Blake 59.3.
Wanderlinde, William Weber. “A Possible New Path for Blake Studies: A Review of
William
Blake’s Manuscripts.”
Ilha do Desterro, vol. 78, 2025, 6 pp.,
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2025.e103308. In
English. “[T]he volume … brings new paths away from the illuminated books’ centrality, focusing
instead on the many extant MSS Blake wrote. The chapters by different scholars
build on recent scholarship, as well as on the facsimiles provided by the
Archive
(which already provides access to every major MS Blake wrote), to offer new
ways of analyzing and understanding Blake’s MSS.”
D
Dartar, Serdar.
“Çizgilerin Ardındaki Şiir: William Blake’in Sembolik Vizyonu [The Poetry behind
the Lines: William Blake’s Symbolic Vision].” D-Sanat, vol. 1, no. 10,
2025, pp. 558-71, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17169665. Dartar’s article
examines Blake’s distinctive artistic identity as both poet and painter, with
particular emphasis on his commitment to individual imagination and spiritual
experience. It explores central themes in his work, including imagination,
individuality, an inner relationship with nature, and mystical vision. While
the study does not propose a radically new interpretation, it offers a careful
and well-developed synthesis of established critical perspectives. It is
especially valuable as an accessible introduction for Turkish literary
audiences, clarifying the integration of visual art and poetry in Blake’s
creative practice.
Davies, Keri. “Brother Blake and Sister Blake and the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s
Family.” See Davies in Part V.
Davies, Keri. “The
Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family (2006).” See Davies in Part V.
De Bruin, Louise. “‘My Precious Fellow—Oct. 8’: The Letters of John Cowper Powys to His Niece
Mary Casey.” The Powys Journal, vol. 35, 2025, pp. 196-231. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/27389036. Blake is
referenced in a 7 Oct. 1942 letter from Powys:
E
Elliott, Jake.
Review of Blake and the Failure of Prophecy, by Lucy Cogan. See Cogan.
Erdil, Sabiha. Cubrân
Halil Cubrân’ın Eserlerinde William Blake Etkisi [The Impact of William
Blake on the Works of Jubran Khalil Jubran]. 2025. Sakarya U, MA thesis. In
Turkish. Erdil’s thesis offers a detailed comparative study of Cibran Khalil
Cibran (1883–1931), one of the prominent representatives of modern Arabic
literature in the Western world, and Blake. The study analyzes Blake’s
influence on Cibran. Cibran’s Arabic writings are compared with Blake’s works
under the thematic categories of nature, pessimism, rebellion and resistance,
religion, and freedom. The thesis concludes that Blake exerted a significant
influence on Cibran, particularly in shaping his critical and negative stance
toward institutional religion and the Church.
F
Fiddes, Paul S. “Is
Blake Also among the Baptists? Freedom from the Law in William Blake, John
Bunyan, and Baptist Thinking.” Baptist Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2, 2026,
pp. 66-84, https://doi.org/10.1080/0005576X.2025.2542059. Examines Blake’s
relationship to the Keppel Street Baptist Church and to Baptist theology as
depicted in the watercolor illustrations of Bunyan. “‘Is Blake also among the
Baptists?’ We might say: yes, among some Baptists on some matters.
In his immediate context of Keppel Street Baptist Church, we might say, among some
members, but not its ministers, despite Blake’s part in engraving a portrait of
one of them, John Upton” (84). John Linnell and Samuel Palmer are discussed.
See also Timothy Whelan’s article “Samuel Palmer and the Baptists” under Palmer
in Division II.
Flores Moreno,
Cristina. Review of Weaving Tales: Anglo-Iberian Encounters on Literatures
in English, edited by Paula García-Ramírez, Beatriz Valverde, Angélica
Varandas, and Jason Whittaker. See Blake 59.3.
Forbes, Malcolm. Review
of William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, by Philip Hoare. See Hoare.
Freedman, Linda.
“Fallen Forms: Blake’s Comedy of Errors.” The Myth of the Fall in
Nineteenth-Century Literature, by Freedman, Oxford UP, 2025. ISBN: 9780198969570.
Examines the fall in both the Genesis Manuscript and The Book of Urizen.
G
Gardiner, Bruce.
“‘To entertain this Starry Stranger’: Jane Taylor, William Blake, Edward Lear,
and Mem Fox in Martha Nussbaum’s Classroom.” Literature and Pedagogy:
Studies in Honour of Bruce Gardiner, edited by Anthony Cordingley, Sydney UP,
2025, pp. 135-50. ISBN: 9781761540011. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.26769565.16. Despite the
title, there is just a very slight mention of Blake’s Songs of Innocence.
Garnier-Tardieu, Claire, and Jessica Stephens, editors. Kathleen Raine: A Voice for the
Twenty-First Century. Peter Lang, 2025. ISBN: 9781803741871. A collection
of essays that “aims to widen the readership of this major British writer of
the twentieth century, whose singular voice resonates well into the
twenty-first century” (1). Several of the essays refer to Blake. The book is
divided into four sections: “Kathleen Raine’s Poetic and Philosophical World”;
“Kathleen Raine and Neoplatonism”; “Kathleen Raine: Nature, the Imagination,
and Romanticism”; and “Kathleen Raine: Educator and Education.”
Gleeson, Andrew.
“In Defence of Soft Pragmatism: Embracing the Myriad Modalities of Theory.” Footprint,
vol. 19, no. 2, 2025, pp. 25-38, https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.19.2.7807. Uses Laocoön
to posit a “Blakean post-structural understanding” (30).
González
Cruz, Iván. “El lenguaje aforístico en la poesía de William Blake [The Aphoristic
Language in the Poetry of William Blake].” Plurentes. Artes y Letras,
no. 16, 2025, https://doi.org/10.24215/18536212e113. In
Spanish.
Gubenkova, A. A., and E. M. Lemyagova. “Mashinnyy perevod poeticheskikh tekstov:
analiz perevodov DeepAI i Perplexity po proizvedeniyam Uil'yama Bleyka [Machine Translation of Poetic Texts: Analysis of Deep AI and Perplexity Translations of William Blake’s Works].” Mezhdunarodnyy
zhurnal gumanitarnykh i estestvennykh nauk [International
Journal of Humanities and Natural Sciences], no. 8, 2025,
pp. 247-51, sciup.org/mashinnyj-perevod-pojeticheskih-tekstovanaliz-perevodov-deepai-i-perplexity-po-170210886. In
Russian (abstract in Russian and English). The authors analyze the
possibilities of artificial intelligence systems, taking Blake’s “The Blossom” and “The Angel” and comparing
poetical translations (“The Blossom” by Vladimir Mikushevich and “The Angel” by
Samuil Marshak) with AI translations.
Guite, Malcolm. Review
of Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, by Mark
Vernon. See Vernon, Awake!
Gustafsson,
Daniel. “Calling, Kairos, Kerygma: The Example of William Blake.”
Theological and Philosophical Explorations of the Call of Literature,
edited by David Lonsdale, Emilia Di Rocco, and Brett H. Speakman, Routledge,
2025. Power of the Word 6. ISBN: 9781032387161. Discusses Milton and
“the important but neglected notion of kerygma, elucidating the radical
way in which Blake conceived of the poet’s ability to directly effect changes
in the world mutually shared by writer and reader within the wider embrace of
divine imagination.”
H
Harris, Alexandra.
“An Open Gate: William Blake at Felpham.” The Rising Down: Lives in a
Sussex Landscape, by Harris, Faber, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Reviews
Albinia, Alice. “A
Visit from Mr. Milton: A Personal, Cultural and Historical Record of West
Sussex.”
TLS, 26 Apr. 2024. “Harris writes tenderly and beautifully of
the human experience of land and describes with acuity how the places we know
are often linked through our experiences, thoughts and memories to other
lands.”
Owens, Susan. “Thinking Local: A Deep Dive into the Creative Past of West Sussex Brings Many
Rewards.”
Apollo, vol. 199, no. 730, 2024, p. 112.
Watkins, Charles.
Journal
of Historical Geography, vol. 86, Dec. 2024, pp. 401-02.
Hoare, Philip. William
Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love. Pegasus Books, 2025. ISBN:
9781639368471. An idiosyncratic reflection on Blake and his reception that is intentionally
anti-academic, with no chapter titles (or even numbers for the chapters), foot-
or endnotes, bibliography, or index. That said, Hoare weaves together
intriguing confluences between Blake and his many admirers, often around
figures of the sea and whales.
Author talk
See Blake Society in Part V.
Reviews
Forbes, Malcolm.
The
Wall Street Journal, 13 June 2025,
www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/william-blake-and-the-sea-monsters-of-love-review-eye-of-the-tyger-fca021b7. “Mr. Hoare’s book is a triumph, as strange, unclassifiable and awe-inspiring as the man at
its beating heart.”
Irmscher, Christoph.
“New Book Offers a Suitably Poetic Vision of Blake and His Legacy.”
The Art
Newspaper,
5 Aug. 2025,
www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/08/05/a-poetic-vision-of-blake-and-his-legacy-to-match-that-of-its-subject. Translated into
Russian as “Uil'yam Bleyk v okruzhenii morskikh monstrov lyubvi [William
Blake Surrounded by Sea Monsters of Love],”
The Art Newspaper Russia, no.
134, 3 Oct. 2025, p. 43,
www.theartnewspaper.ru/posts/20251003-dnkq.
Marsden, Philip.
“William Blake Still Weaves His Mystic Spell.”
The Spectator, 12 Apr.
2025. Behind a paywall.
Miller, Catriona.
“
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love—A New Book by Phillip [
sic]
Hoare.”
Daily Art Magazine, 9 Apr. 2025,
www.dailyartmagazine.com/william-blake-and-sea-monsters-of-love.
The New Yorker, vol. 101, no.
14, 2 June 2025, p. 59.
Prodger, Michael. “Under
the Spell of William Blake.”
Engelsberg Ideas, 17 June 2025,
engelsbergideas.com/reviews/under-the-spell-of-william-blake. “While there is
something admirable in encountering an author so obviously entranced by his
subject and who writes in word poems and images that can be both inventive and
gorgeous, for the more prosaically-minded reader, whose investment in Blake is
less all-in, it can be a bit too much. Blake is baffling enough on his own
terms, he hardly needs further mystifying.”
Uglow, Jenny. See Uglow.
Hobson,
Christopher Z. “Who Are Blake’s Eternals?” See Blake 59.2.
I
İnan, Emre, and Yaşar
Uslu. “Bilginin Görsel Hale Getirilmesinde İllüstrasyon ve Baskı Resmin Rolü
[The Role of Illustration and Printmaking in Visualizing Information].” Sanat
ve Tasarım Dergisi, vol. 15, no. 2, 2025, pp. 1148-69, https://doi.org/10.20488/sanattasarim.1827981. In Turkish. Although
this study does not focus exclusively on Blake, it examines the function of
illustration in the visualization of knowledge and the contribution of
printmaking to the dissemination of information through reproduction. The
authors argue that illustration renders knowledge more accessible and enables
the viewer to engage with a subject more rapidly, while printmaking serves as a
crucial medium for the wider circulation of that knowledge. Positioned at the
intersection of art and design disciplines, illustration and printmaking are
significant instruments that strengthen visual communication. Within this
broader framework, the article assigns a distinctive place to Blake as a unique
figure in Western art for his integration of illustration and printmaking
techniques into a unified language that combines the textual and the visual.
The authors underline that Blake’s original prints demonstrate that
illustration functions not merely as a tool of visualization, but also as a
mode of artistic and intellectual expression. His approach to printmaking is
interpreted not only as technical mastery, but also as evidence of artistic and
conceptual innovation.
Ingham, Toby. Review
of Blake’s Job: Adventures in Becoming, by Jason Wright. See Wright.
Insley, Alice,
editor. Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno.
Hopefulmonster, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Review
Calè, Luisa. See
Blake 59.1.
Irmscher,
Christoph. Review of William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, by
Philip Hoare. See Hoare.
K
Kendall, Stuart.
“Infinite Liberty: Georges Bataille Reading Blake in Postwar France.” See Blake
Society in Part V.
Kidson, Alex, and
Morton D. Paley, with contributions by Mark Crosby and Lisa Gee. “Hayley,
Romney, and Blake: A Conversation.” See Gee and Crosby under Hayley in Division
II.
Kubota,
Eri. “‘Songs of Experience’ no Tora wa Nanika: Shi niokeru Ningen no Tamashii
no Sogo Kankei no Byosha nitsuite [What Is ‘The Tyger’ in Songs of
Experience: The Description of ‘the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’].”
Ryutsu Keizai Daigaku Ronshu [The Journal of Ryutsu Keizai University],
vol. 60, no. 1, 2025, pp. 63-72. In Japanese.
L
Leporati, Matthew.
“‘Mark Well My Words! They Are of Your Eternal Salvation’: William Blake’s
Milton as Missionary against Empire.” Romantic Epics and the Mission of Empire, by Leporati, Cambridge UP, 2023. <Blake (2024, 2025)>
Reviews
Townsend, Chris.
The
BARS Review, no. 60, 2024,
www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview/article/view/398.
Wilson, Ross. “The
British Mission: Epic Poetry in the Age of the Romantics.”
TLS, 21 Feb.
2025. “Byron and Blake emerge as the heroes of the book.”
Leporati, Matthew.
Review of Divine Images: The Life and Work of William Blake, by Jason
Whittaker. See Blake 58.4.
Leporati, Matthew.
“The Urizen-Haunted World: Reconciling Blake and Science.” See Blake Society in
Part V.
Lussier, Mark. Review
of Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, by Timothy Morton. See
Morton.
M
Magarik, Raphael. Review
of The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition,
by Yosefa Raz. See Raz.
Malik, Aqsa,
Ayesha Malik, and Mariam Waheed. “Exploring Marginalization and Social
Injustice: A Critical Discourse Analysis of William Blake’s ‘The Chimney
Sweeper.’” Review of Education, Administration and Law, vol. 8, no. 1,
2025, pp. 87-97, real.spcrd.org/index.php/real/article/view/408/418. Uses critical discourse
analysis to examine both versions of “The Chimney Sweeper,” suggesting that
“Blake’s verse is a negative exposition of structural power and exploitation
that unspools the manner by which language is used to speak back to inequality,
injustice, and marginalization in society” (95).
Marchetto
Santorun, M. Cecilia. “William Blake in Spanish Popular Culture and
Literature.” Weaving Tales: Anglo-Iberian Encounters on Literatures in
English, edited by Paula García-Ramírez, Beatriz Valverde, Angélica
Varandas, and Jason Whittaker, Routledge, 2023. <Blake (2024, 2025)>
Review
Flores Moreno,
Cristina. See
Blake 59.3.
Marks, Rebecca.
“‘A History of Art & Science’: William Blake’s Last Judgment.” See Blake
59.3.
Marks, Rebecca. “The
Last Judgement: Blake’s Lost History Painting.” See Blake Society in Part
V.
Marks, Rebecca. “To
Recover Art to the Florentine Original”: William Blake’s Reception of
Michelangelo. 2025. U of Cambridge, PhD dissertation,
https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.118135.
Marley, Jodie. Review
of William Blake’s Visions: Art, Hallucinations, Synaesthesia, by David
Worrall. See Global Blake Network in Part V.
Marley, Jodie. William
Blake’s Mysticism: The Legacy of Prophetic Women. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025.Based on her PhD dissertation, The Mystic Communities of William Blake and
W. B. Yeats: Shared Spiritual Influences and Legacies, U of Nottingham,
2023, repository.nottingham.ac.uk/handle/123456789/58524
<Blake (2024)>. Her presentation at the 2022 Global Blake:
Afterlives in Art, Literature and Music conference, “What the Yeatses Partly
Learned: A Vision, Blake’s Mysticism, and Spiritual Collaboration”
<Blake (2022)>, addresses many of the same issues as her book. ISBN: 9783032038173.
An important new study that argues for the centrality of Blake’s mysticism
(against Northrop Frye and David V. Erdman) in terms of understanding Blake’s
own works and his reception in William Butler Yeats’s circle. Marley highlights
Blake’s contemporary female prophets (Dorothy Gott [c. 1748–1812] and Joanna
Southcott [1750–1814]) and Yeats’s contemporary poets and mystics (George
William Russell [1867–1935], William Sharp [1855–1905], George Yeats [1892–1968],
and Iseult Gonne [1894–1954]).
Marsden, Philip. Review
of William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, by Philip Hoare. See
Hoare.
Matthew, Patricia A. “Romanticism and the Abolitionist Turn.” Romanticism and Antislavery
Literatures: Pedagogies and Contexts, edited by Joselyn M. Almeida and
Amelia Worsley, Romantic Circles, 2025, romantic-circles.org/praxis/antislavery/praxis.2024.antislavery.abolition. On teaching “The
Little Black Boy” and bringing issues of race and Blackness to Romanticism. She
references David Bindman’s “Blake’s Vision of Slavery Revisited” <WBHC 2177>
as “offer[ing] a compelling, accessible history that answers students’
questions about Blake’s understanding of race and how consistent it is with the
period.”
McNamee, Brendan. William
Blake, Jacques Derrida and the Secret Heart of Deconstruction: The Dark Back of
Time. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2025. ISBN: 9781036456313. “This book
offers a reading of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy of deconstruction seen in the
light of William Blake’s aphorism from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, ‘Eternity
is in love with the productions of time’” (1). McNamee invokes the spirit of
Blake more than he engages with Blake’s texts and designs, but this religious
study of deconstruction does a marvelous job of capturing Blake’s spirit.
Miller, Catriona. Review
of William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, by Philip Hoare. See
Hoare.
Miller, Thornton. Review
of Britten’s Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs, by Gordon Cameron Sly. See
Sly.
Morton, Timothy. Hell:
In Search of a Christian Ecology. Columbia UP, 2024. <Blake
(2025)>
Translated into Italian by Valerio Cianci as
Inferno. William Blake e la ricerca di
un’ecologia Cristiana, Timeo, 2025. 370 pp.
Reviews
Albinus, Lars. “Timothy Mortons øko-kristne vision af himmel og helvede.”
Dansk teologisk
tidsskrift, vol. 88, no. 3, 2025, pp. 210-27. In Danish.
Lussier, Mark.
The
Wordsworth Circle, vol. 56, no. 3, summer 2025, pp. 276-84.
Rubel, William Ilan. See
Blake 58.4.
N
Nagai,
Ryunosuke, editor. Meikyoku ga Kataru Meiga [Wonderful Stories about Music
and Art]. Sansai Books, 2025. 231 pp. ISBN: 9784866734422. In Japanese. 1
plate by Blake. Section 16, “Natsu no Yo no Yume yori Kekkon Koshinkyoku [‘Wedding
March’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream]” mentions Oberon, Titania, and
Puck with Fairies Dancing (Butlin #161) (76-81).
Nakajima,
Kota. “William Blake no Zenmen Sashie to Oirozuri Hanga niokeru Taiyo: ‘Hi no
Oitaru Mono’ kara ‘Adam o Sozosuru Erohim’ e [The Sun in William Blake’s Full-Page
Illustrations and Large Color Prints: From ‘The Ancient of Days’ to Elohim
Creating Adam].” Tetsugaku [Philosophy], no. 155, 2025, pp.
99-121. In Japanese, with English synopsis. 12 plates by Blake. It discusses the
symbolic meaning of the sun—material and spiritual—in “The Ancient of Days,” The
Song of Los, and Elohim Creating Adam.
Nakajima,
Yoshie. “Hearn to William Blake: Sono 2 [Hearn and William Blake: Part 2].” Yakugaku
Toshokan [Pharmaceutical Library Bulletin], vol. 69, no. 3, 2024,
pp. 94-103. In Japanese. 5 plates by Blake and 2 photocopies of Blake’s Notebook.
An introductory essay on Lafcadio Hearn
(1850–1904) and Blake.
Nawaz, Mazhar, and
Kausar Rasheed. “Poets of Mysticism: Jalal ud-Din Rumi and William Blake: A
Comparative and Contrastive Analysis.” Journal of Policy Research, vol.
10, no. 3, 2024, pp. 255-65, jprpk.com/index.php/jpr/article/view/651. “In terms of
mystical philosophy, Rumi’s God-centered vision differs from Blake’s
human-centric approach. Rumi’s poetry focuses on the soul’s journey back to
God, often depicting the painful longing for divine union. For Rumi, the divine
is transcendent, and the mystic must dissolve the self to achieve reunion with
the beloved. In contrast, Blake views divinity as immanent, located within the
individual and accessible through creative imagination. His vision does not
involve the annihilation of the self but rather the expansion of human
consciousness to perceive the divine in all things” (265).
Nijibayashi, Kei. “Romantic
Imagery in E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View.” English Studies,
vol. 106, no. 8, 2025, pp. 1167-83, https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2025.2522217. Viewing the
novel “in terms of its inheritance and incorporation of Romantic motifs”
(1167), Nijibayashi argues for allusions to Blake in the relationship of Lucy
and George. Allusions to William Wordsworth and Percy Shelley are also
considered.
O
Okamoto, Kenjiro. Unkei,
Rouault, Blake: Okamoto Kenjiro Bijutsu Hihyo Shusei [Unkei, Rouault,
and Blake: A Collection of Critical Essays on Art by Kenjiro Okamoto]. Edited
by Hideyo Sengoku and Shigeo Suzuki, Suiseisha, 2025. 358 pp. ISBN:
9784801008557. In Japanese. Kenjiro Okamoto (1919–2003), an art critic,
published books on Unkei (?–1224), a Japanese sculptor; Georges Rouault;
British paintings in general; and Blake <BSJ 88>. In Part 3 in
this collection, he discusses Blake’s art, life, and mysticism, making mention
of George Morland, James Ward, André Gide, and Henri Bergson (187-277).
Oliveira, Camila.
Review of Britten’s Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs, by Gordon Cameron Sly.
See Blake 59.3.
Oliveira, Camila. Review
of Jerusalem: Blake, Parry, and the Fight for Englishness, by Jason
Whittaker. See Blake 58.4.
Oostrum, Duco van.
“Autobiography, Critical Fabulation, and African Voices in the Archive of Dutch
Slavery: John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative (1790; 1796) and Joachim
Nettelbeck’s Ein Mann (1910).” Contextualizes Blake’s engraving “Group
of Negros, as Imported to Be Sold for Slaves.” See Oostrum under Stedman in
Division II.
P
Paley, Morton D.
“Memories of David Bindman.” See Blake 59.1.
Paley, Morton D.
“Our New Co-Editor.” See Blake 58.4.
Paley, Morton D. Review
of William Blake’s Manuscripts: Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests, edited
by Mark Crosby and Josephine A. McQuail. See Blake 59.3.
Phillips, Michael.
“William Blake’s Colour Printing: Methods and Materials.” Printing Colour,
1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions, and Receptions, edited by
Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage, Oxford UP, 2025, pp. 363-75.
ISBN: 9780197267530. See the summary in the introductory essay.
Pinheiro de Sousa,
Alcinda, and Jason Whittaker. “Urizen Now: Reading Anew William Blake’s
Response to His Times.” Weaving Tales: Anglo-Iberian Encounters on
Literatures in English, edited by Paula García-Ramírez, Beatriz Valverde,
Angélica Varandas, and Jason Whittaker, Routledge, 2023. <Blake (2024, 2025)>
Review
Flores Moreno, Cristina. See
Blake 59.3.
Poirier,
Marie-Lise. Review of The Radical Print, by Esther Chadwick. See
Chadwick.
Prodger, Michael. Review
of William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, by Philip Hoare. See
Hoare.
R
Rafaelli,
Verónica, and Mercedes Vernet. “Devastación y deshumanización: ‘London
Revisited’ en diálogo con Autobiographies y ‘London.’” Literatura en
lengua inglesa. Lecturas desde el Sur, coordinated by Silvana N. Fernández
et al., Editorial de la U de La Plata, 2025, pp. 103-11. ISBN: 9789503426197.
In Spanish. On Kathleen Raine’s intertextual revision of Blake’s “London” from Songs
of Experience in her poem “London Revisited.”
Raier,
Sofía. “Los contradictorios fuegos de la revolución.” Cuadernos de arte,
no. 2, 2025, pp. 74-81. In Spanish. An essay on Blake’s watercolor The Number of the Beast Is 666 (c. 1805) (Butlin #522).
Raz, Yosefa.
“Walking through Blake’s Irregular Bible.” The Poetics of Prophecy:
Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition, by Raz, Cambridge UP, 2024. <Blake
(2025)>
Review
Magarik, Raphael. “Weak
Prophecy as a Critique of Just-So Secularization Stories.”
Ancient Jew
Review, 9 Nov. 2025. “What is often understood as a historical
transformation (from Isaiah to Blake) is read instead as a tension immanent to
the biblical text, which is then distributed between two fields of modern
discourse, one of which (biblical philology) represents itself as recovering
the ancient meaning, and the other of which (Romantic and post-Romantic poetry)
understands itself as creating
de novo.”
Razumovskaya,
Oksana. “Illyustratsii Uil''yama Bleyka k p''ese-maske Dzhona Miltona ‘Komos’
[William Blake’s Illustrations for John
Milton’s Masque Comus].” Romano-germanskie
literatury: traditsii i sovremennost'. Materialy IV Mezhdunarodnoy nauchnoy
konferentsii, XXXVII Mezhdunarodnoy nauchnoy konferentsii RAPAL,
posvyashchennoy 100-letiyu N. P. Mikhal'skoy [Romano-Germanic
Literatures: Tradition and Modernity. Proceedings
of the IV International Scientific Conference, XXXVII International Scientific
Conference RAPAL, Dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of N. P. Mikhalskaya],
2025, pp. 216-19,
elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=86311870. In
Russian. The author comes to the conclusion that Blake’s rethinking of Milton’s
images is expressed in the atmosphere of the entire
cycle of drawings, but most of all in the interpretation of the Lady and Comus
images.
Riccardi, Silvia. Dark
Romanticism: Literature, Art, and the Body. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. ISBN:
9783031643644. The book “examines how Fuseli, Blake, and [Mary] Shelley
incorporated into their own medium elements from visual cultures of anatomy and
natural history to surpass the limitations of empirical inquiry in a complex
transition from organic to fragmented form” (28). In addition to the
introduction, there are two chapters on Blake, “Blake’s Biomorphism” and “The
Body in the Line: Blake’s Dante.” The first uses the concept of biomorphism to
explore the parallels between Blake’s notion of the line and mappings of fibrous
networks of veins, nerves, roots, and other systems constructing living beings.
The second reads Blake’s depiction of bodies in the Dante illustrations. See also
Riccardi under Fuseli in Division II.
Richardson, Alan. “Beyond
the Romantic Chronology.” Romanticism and Antislavery Literatures:
Pedagogies and Contexts, edited by Joselyn M. Almeida and Amelia Worsley, Romantic
Circles, 2025, romantic-circles.org/praxis/antislavery/praxis.2024.antislavery.richardson. Richardson
reflects on the lack of engagement in studies of Romanticism with Africa and
Blackness; he references his 1990 MLA session, “Africa in the Romantic
Imagination,” and his “Colonialism, Race, and Lyric Irony in Blake’s ‘The
Little Black Boy’” <BBS 621, WBHC 2581-82>.
Riordan,
John. Los: A Vision of William Blake. Book 1: Innocence. John
Riordan Images and Comics, 2024, www.johnriordan.co.uk/LOS-a-Vision-of-William-Blake. <Blake
(2025)>
Ripley, Wayne. “Irene
Tayler.” Oxford Bibliographies, 9 Sept. 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0218. On the scholar
of Thomas Gray, Blake, and the Brontës.
Ripley, Wayne C.,
with contributions by Fernando
Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia. A Selected
Annotated Bibliography of William Blake and His Circle: A Guide to Further
Research. See Ripley et al., Selected, in Part IV, Section A.
Ripley, Wayne C.,
with Fernando Castanedo, Hikari Sato, Hüseyin Alhas, and Vera Serdechnaia.
“William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Scholarship in 2024.” See Blake
59.1.
Ritchie, Caroline
Anjali. William Blake and the Cartographic Imagination: Maps, Diagrams, Networks.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. ISBN: 9783031803253. An original and thoughtful
examination of Blake’s own practice of mapping in light of eighteenth-century
cartographic practices and of Blake scholars’ utilization of mapping and
diagrams to (mis)understand Blake’s works.
Review
Conley, Tom.
Imago
Mundi, vol. 77, no. 2, 2025, pp. 226-27,
https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2025.2577375.
Rogers, Annise.
“The Urizen Cycle.” See Blake Society in Part V.
Romero
Allué, Milena. “‘Naked Beauty display’d’: Bodies, Souls and Sexuality in
William Blake’s Composite Art. Part I.” Le Simplegadi, no. 25, 2025, pp.
91-118, le-simplegadi.it/it/article/view/3616. In
English (abstract in English and Italian). “[Blake’s] bodies, mainly
represented in the two opposed postures of expansion and contraction, are
endowed with a writhing movement, a serpentine pattern and androgynous features
that evoke Michelangelo’s art: considering that Blake’s main goal is the
alchemic coincidentia oppositorum, androgyny is a recurring theme in his
works” (abstract).
Rubel, William
Ilan. Review of Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, by Timothy
Morton. See Morton.
S
Saracino,
Francesco. “L’immaginazione di Gesù: William Blake, Oscar Wilde e gli altri.” Rassegna
di Teologia, vol. 66, no. 1, 2025, pp. 49-66. In Italian (abstract in
Italian and English). “After having been neglected for a long time, the
imagination of Jesus became a topic that fascinated artists, writers and
theologians, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, during the 19th century.
These pages outline the phenomenon by referring to some of the protagonists of
that turning point” (abstract).
Saral, Ramazan. “The
Influence of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso on Songs of Innocence
and of Experience.” See Blake Society in Part V.
Saral, Ramazan. Review
of William Blake’s Divine Love: Visions of Oothoon, by Joshua Schouten
de Jel. See Blake 58.4.
Saral, Ramazan.
“Wedding with Eternity: Death in the Poetry of Blake and Rumi.” See Global
Blake Network in Part V.
Sato,
Hikari. “Oe Kenzaburo Atarashii Hito yo Mezameyo niokeru William Blake
Inyokasho Shuttenn Chosa: Erdman to Raine no Michibiki kara Hanarete [A Survey
of Quotations from William Blake in Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!
by Kenzaburo Oe: Away from the Guidance of David V. Erdman and Kathleen Raine].”
Choiki Bunka Kagaku Kiyo [Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies],
no. 29, 2024, pp. 65-94. In Japanese. By identifying the sources of all
quotations from Blake in Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! by
Kenzaburo Oe, the essay discusses Oe’s original interpretation of Blake’s text,
as well as the influence of Erdman and Raine. With a list of the sources and
quotations from Blake.
Schaffer, Simon.
“Blake’s Lawgiving, Newton’s System, Reynolds’s Justice.” See Blake
59.2.
Schouten de Jel, Joshua.
William Blake’s Divine Love: Visions of Oothoon. Routledge, 2024. <Blake
(2025)>
Review
Saral, Ramazan.
See
Blake 58.4.
Schouten de Jel,
Joshua. “William Blake’s Radical Wordplay and the Neologism ‘Warshipped.’” Studies
in English Literature, 1500–1900, vol. 63, no. 4, autumn 2025, pp. 499-514.
Project Muse, https://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2025.a975124. “Around the
suspension of habeas corpus in 1794, there is a conspicuous shift in Blake’s
poetic discourse as he began to systematically implement an idiosyncratic mythopoeic
lexicon. His neologisms, moreover, highlight a proximal radical agenda”
(abstract).
Serdechnaia,
Vera. “Uil'yam Bleyk i ego geroi v angloyazychnoy fantasticheskoy literature
1960–2000-kh gg. [William Blake and His Characters in English-Language Science
Fiction and Fantasy Fiction of the 1960s–2000s].” Studia Litterarum,
vol. 10, no. 2, 2025, pp. 84-99, https://doi.org/10.22455/2500-4247-2025-10-2-84-99. In
Russian (abstract in Russian and English). The author analyzes how Philip José Farmer uses Blake’s worlds
in his space fantasy (World of Tiers series, 1965–93); Crawford Kilian
takes Blake’s toponyms as names for parallel worlds in his The Fall of the
Republic (1987); and Philip Pullman uses Blake’s concept of parallel worlds
in his Dark Materials series (1995–2000). Blake becomes a character in
Ray Nelson’s time-travel novel Blake’s Progress (1975); James Ballard’s
erotic-psychedelic mystery The Unlimited Dream Company (1979); and Orson
Card’s alternate-universe fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker
(1987–2003).
Sinding, Michael.
“Energy Models of Causation in Mind, Culture and Science: Electro/Magnetic
Thinking in Blake, Galvani and Mesmer.” Narrative and Cognition in
Literature and Science, edited by Sinding, Aura Heydenreich, and Klaus
Mecke, De Gruyter Brill, 2025, pp. 361-400. ISBN: 9783110782790. Blake’s use of
electrical imagery in Milton is discussed on pp. 378-80.
Sly, Gordon
Cameron. “Songs and Proverbs of William Blake.” Britten’s Donne,
Hardy and Blake Songs: Cyclic Design and Meaning. Boydell Press, 2023. <Blake (2024, 2025)>
Reviews
Miller, Thornton.
Notes,
vol. 81, no. 3, Mar. 2025, pp. 559-61.
Oliveira, Camila.
See
Blake 59.3.
Smith, Jacob. Bateson’s
Alphabet: The ABCs of Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind. U of Michigan P,
2024, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12805341.
Review
Tebourski, Ines. See
Blake 59.3.
Smith, Jacob.
“David Lynch Presents William Blake’s The Sea of Time and Space.” See
Smith in Part V.
Smith, Jacob. “William
Blake, Gregory Bateson, and David Lynch: Audiovisual Approaches to Blake
Scholarship.” See Global Blake Network in Part V.
T
Tebourski, Ines. Review
of Bateson’s Alphabet: The ABCs of Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind, by
Jacob Smith; “David Lynch Presents William Blake’s The Sea of Time and Space,”
by Smith. See Blake 59.3.
Townsend, Chris. Review
of Romantic Epics and the Mission of Empire, by Matthew Leporati. See Leporati,
“‘Mark Well My Words!’”
Tsai, Li Hui.
“Close Reading Event: ‘The Little Black Boy.’” See Blake Society in Part V.
Türk, Nesli. “Bir
İfade Kipi Olarak Sanatta Melankoli [Melancholy in Art as a Medium of
Expression].” Sanat Tarihi Dergisi, vol. 34, no. 2, 2025, pp. 841-77,
https://doi.org/10.29135/std.1716447. In Turkish. Türk’s
article centers on the concept of melancholy, tracing its intellectual
foundations to ancient Greece and examining its development within the Western
philosophical tradition and art history. It investigates the transformation of
attitudes toward melancholy across cultural history and analyzes how this
highly productive concept has been reflected in the plastic arts, with
particular emphasis on painting. In this context, the article devotes specific
attention to Blake, situating his treatment of melancholy within the broader
history of Western literature and comparing his approach with that of other
artists. In particular, Blake’s illustration Melancholy, produced for
Milton’s Il Penseroso, is discussed as a contemplative and serene
composition structured around spiritual and religious figures. The author
provides a detailed thematic and formal analysis of the illustration, arguing
that Blake’s compositional choices and use of color reinforce the melancholic
atmosphere. In doing so, the article positions Blake as a distinctive
contributor to the visual articulation of melancholy in Western art.
U
Uglow, Jenny. “Visions
and Leviathans.” TLS, 25 Apr. 2025. A review of William Blake and the
Sea Monsters of Love, by Philip Hoare; William Blake’s Visions: Art,
Hallucinations, Synaesthesia, by David Worrall; and The Rossetti
Manuscript (SP Books facsimile, 2024). “One
can foresee a rush of books in the run-up to 2027, the bicentenary of Blake’s
death, but nothing will be as audacious or intriguing as William Blake
and the Sea Monsters of Love.”
Ugolini, Ava. “‘Life
During Wartime’: How New Wave Music Echoed William Blake.” The Albatross,
vol. 15, 2025, pp. 66-76, journals.uvic.ca/index.php/albatross/article/view/22456. “Both Blake and
new wave artists like Talking Heads, Blondie, and New Order rejected orthodox
conventions, emphasizing radical independence and experimental approaches”
(abstract).
Umetsu, Narumi. Bunmei
wo Toinaosu: Shimin no Tachiba yori [Requestioning of Civilization: From
the Standpoint of a Citizen]. HS Co., 2024. 498 pp. ISBN: 9784910595115. In
Japanese. An enlarged edition of Bunmei wo Toinaosu, originally
published in 1979. Narumi Umetsu (1917–96) was a Japanese Blake scholar, well known
for his Blake Zen Chosaku [The Complete Writings of William Blake]
<BSJ 5> in two volumes. This is a collection of his miscellaneous
essays, such as “My Favorite Words of Blake” (341-45), “What Attracts Me to
Blake” (437), and “The Significance of Blake in the Present” (438-42).
V
Vendler, Helen. “Artless
Art.”Originally published with the same title in Liberties, vol. 4, no. 1, autumn
2023, libertiesjournal.com/articles/the-art-of-artlessness. Inhabit the Poem: Last Essays, Library of America, 2025. ISBN:
9781598538274. References Blake’s “The Lamb.” “Nothing is harder to comment on
than a piece of art which successfully pretends to artlessness.”
Vernon, Mark. Awake!
William Blake and the Power of the Imagination. Hurst and Company, 2025.
ISBN: 9781805263777. An introduction to Blake’s life and thought aimed at a
popular audience. It’s unfortunately marred with some errors (“The Blakes were
of dissenting stock” [9]) and oversimplifications (“Los and Enitharmon … as the
superhero-guardians of time and space” [213]).
Interviews and author talks
“
Awake! William
Blake and the Power of the Imagination.”
Beshara Magazine, podcast hosted by Jane Clark
and Nikos Yiangou, 11 July 2025,
besharamagazine.org/podcast/mark-vernon-awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-imagination.
“
Awake! William
Blake and the Power of the Imagination—In Conversation with Mark Vernon.”
YouTube,
uploaded by Zoavision, 20 Aug. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOTzj7plNfQ.
“
Awake! William
Blake and the Power of the Imagination.”
writing.ie, interview conducted by Ben Simmons,
20 June 2025,
www.writing.ie/guest-blogs/awake-william-blake.
“How to Live Like
William Blake!”
YouTube, uploaded by Mark Vernon, 13 June 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-uAYnrOPQE.
“Iain McGilchrist
and Mark Vernon on William Blake: Imagination and Inspiration, Science and
Soul.”
YouTube, uploaded by Iain McGilchrist, 1 July 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGqlAg3xHNE.
“Mark Vernon | William Blake and Neoplatonism.”
YouTube, uploaded by
Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism, 12 Nov. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7wNqInsfwY.
“William Blake and
Awakening the Imagination | Mark Vernon.”
YouTube, uploaded by Seeker to
Seeker, 22 Dec. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j17jn9EdGHQ.
“William Blake and the Imagination | Interview with Mark Vernon.”
YouTube, uploaded by Adam
Walker—Close Reading Poetry and Mark Vernon, 20 Nov. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4PQ8ANdS70.
“William Blake and
the Power of Imagination: Mark Vernon and Charles Stang at Harvard Divinity
School.”
YouTube, uploaded by The Wonderstruck Podcast with Elizabeth
Rovere and Mark Vernon, 18 Nov. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtMG6X22AzQ.
“William Blake and
the Power of Imagination.”
YouTube, uploaded by Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio,
20 Jan. 2026,
www.youtube.com/live/ZvO-V8QoHpc.
“William Blake
Can Change Your Life | with Dr. Mark Vernon.”
YouTube, uploaded by Adam
Walker—Close Reading Poetry, 6 Feb. 2026,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjMxukOohB0.
“William Blake
Masterclass: Poet, Artist and Mystic.”
YouTube, uploaded by UnHerd, 21
July 2025,
www.youtube.com/live/wbwvnGi2ZOc.
Review
Guite, Malcolm.
Church
Times, 1 Aug. 2025,
churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/1-august/books-arts/book-reviews/book-review-awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination-by-mark-vernon. “This is a
compelling and timely book. It is compelling, because the reader shares Mark
Vernon’s sense of excitement as he delves deeper and deeper into William
Blake’s imaginative world and the way in which Blake’s visionary poetry also
gives us vision: helps us see more deeply into the dilemmas and mysteries both
of our own lives and the age in which we live.”
Viscomi,
Joseph. William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings.
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021. <Blake
(2022, 2025)>
Review
Billingsley,
Naomi. See Billingsley.
Volpone, Annalise.
“Imagination and the Pregnant Mind in William Blake’s Cosmogony.” See Global
Blake Network in Part V.
W
Wanderlinde,
William Weber. Review
of William Blake’s Manuscripts: Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests, edited
by Mark Crosby and Josephine A. McQuail. See Crosby
and McQuail.
Ware, Owen. “Marriages
of Heaven and Hell.” Return of the Gods: Mythology in Romantic Philosophy
and Literature, by Ware, Oxford UP, 2025, pp. 82-124. ISBN: 9780197763964.
In a study on the significance of mythology in German and English Romanticism,
Blake is discussed on pp. 84-99: “For Blake, a new mythology is necessary
because both philosophy and religion in their traditional roles have served
merely to reflect the human mind in its state of disharmony, rendering them
unfit to play the liberating role of opening the ‘doors of perception’” (83).
Weston, Sarah T.
“The Infernal Prism: Blake’s Colors Unbound.” See Wyckoff.
Whitson, Roger. “Reassembling Visionary
Physics: Donald Ault, Bruno Latour, and William Blake’s Mathematical
Scenographies.” Essays in Romanticism, vol. 31, no. 1, 2024,
https://doi.org/10.3828/eir.2024.31.1.4. “Ault envisions
that every act of preservation in Blake’s work is also an act of transformation
and becoming. As such, he anticipates later developments in Latourian lab
sociology, actor-network theory (ANT), and media archaeology” (abstract).
Whittaker, Jason. Divine
Images: The Life and Work of William Blake. Reaktion Books, 2021. <Blake
(2022, 2023, 2024)>
Reviews
Billingsley,
Naomi. See Billingsley.
Leporati, Matthew.
See
Blake 58.4.
Whittaker, Jason. Jerusalem:
Blake, Parry, and the Fight for Englishness. Oxford UP, 2022. <Blake (2023, 2024,
2025)>
Review
Oliveira, Camila.
See
Blake 58.4.
Williams, Cynthia
Schoolar. Review of Against the Uprooted Word: Giving Language Time in
Transatlantic Romanticism, by Tristram Wolff. See Wolff.
Wilson, Louise. “A
Technical Examination of William Blake’s Virgil Wood Engravings.” NGV
[National Gallery of Victoria], 30 June 2025, www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/a-technical-examination-of-william-blakes-virgil-wood-engravings. A revised
version of her “Printing Imperfections in William Blake’s Virgil Wood
Engravings and What They Reveal,”
https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.322 <Blake (2023)>.
Wilson, Louise.
“William Blake and the NGV: The History of the Virgil Wood Engravings.” NGV
[National Gallery of Victoria], 30 June 2025, www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/william-blake-and-the-ngv-the-history-of-the-virgil-wood-engravings. Surveys the
history of the Virgil engravings and suggests that “the materials and
techniques used to print and display [those held by the NGV] strongly link them
to the Linnell family.”
Wilson, Ross. Review
of Romantic Epics and the Mission of Empire, by Matthew Leporati. See
Leporati, “‘Mark Well My Words!’”
Wolff, Tristram.
“Voices of the Ground: Blake’s Language in Deep Time.” Against the
Uprooted Word: Giving Language Time in Transatlantic Romanticism, by Wolff,
Stanford UP, 2022. <Blake (2023, 2024, 2025)>
Review
Williams, Cynthia
Schoolar.
The BARS Review, no. 60, 2024,
www.bars.ac.uk/review/index.php/barsreview/article/view/399. “
Against the
Uprooted Word is a subtle, erudite, and lively study that richly
rewards engagement.”
Worrall,
David. “The ‘Secret’ Life of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience,
Copy J: Anthony Blunt, the Rothschilds and M.I.5 in the Cold War.” Visual
Culture in Britain, vol. 23, no. 1, 2025, pp. 50-64, https://doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2025.2464730.A shorter version of this essay, highlighting Blunt’s activities as a Soviet
spy, was published in Vala, no. 4, 2023, pp. 40-47, blakesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/VALA-04.pdf <Blake (2024)>. An intriguing
account of how copy J of Songs of Innocence and of Experience “was fleetingly
caught up in surveillance by M.I.5” (50).
Worrall,
David. William Blake’s Visions: Art, Hallucinations, Synaesthesia. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Reviews
Marley, Jodie. See Global Blake Network in Part V.
Uglow, Jenny. See Uglow.
Wright,
Jason. Blake’s Job: Adventures in Becoming. Routledge, 2023. <Blake (2024, 2025)>
Review
Ingham, Toby.
Psychodynamic
Practice, vol. 30, no. 1, 2024, pp. 110-12,
https://doi.org/10.1080/14753634.2023.2270553.
Wyckoff,
Elizabeth, with an essay by Sarah T. Weston. Blake. Yale UP, 2025. The book
published in conjunction with the exhibition held at the Yale Center for
British Art from 26 Aug. to 30 Nov. 2025. Each of the unassigned chapters below
has a brief introduction by Wyckoff.
Droth, Martina.
“Foreword.” P. 7.
“A Strong and
Singular Imagination: An Introduction to the Life of William Blake.” Pp. 9-25.
“Drawings,
Watercolors, and Tempera Paintings.” Pp. 27-37.
“Blake’s ‘Infernal
Method’ and the Age of Revolution.” Pp. 38-55.
“Commercial
Engravings and Illustrations.” Pp. 57-63.
“Blake’s Original
Illustrations.” Pp. 65-79.
“Jerusalem.”
Pp. 81-93.
“Blake’s Late
Engravings.” Pp. 95-105.
Weston, Sarah T.
“The Infernal Prism: Blake’s Colors Unbound.” Pp. 107-21. An overview of
Blake’s methods of using color and his means of color printing.
Curator
talks and related events
Higgs, John, and
Timothy Young. “The Enduring Influence of William Blake.” In person and
livestream, 30 Oct. 2025,
britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/enduring-influence-william-blake.
YouTube, uploaded
by YaleBritishArt, 24 Nov. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8POZXThThIo.
Weston, Sarah, and
Jessikah Díaz, moderated by Jonathan Kramnick. “Blake: Word and Image.” In
person and livestream, 25 Sept. 2025,
britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/blake-word-and-image.
YouTube, uploaded
by YaleBritishArt, 2 Oct. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHBaC9kcpU.
Wyckoff,
Elizabeth, and Timothy Young, moderated by Richard Brodhead. “Exhibition
Opening Conversation: William Blake—Artist, Poet, Maker, and Radical Thinker.” In
person and livestream, 4 Sept. 2025,
britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/exhibition-opening-conversation-william-blake-artist-poet-maker-and-radical.
YouTube, uploaded
by YaleBritishArt, 10 Sept. 2025,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiD4JcnlqHo.
Yale Voxtet. “Songs
from the Imagination: Music Inspired by the Poetry of William Blake.” In
person, 20 Nov. 2025,
britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/songs-imagination-music-inspired-poetry-william-blake. No video
available. “Join us as the Yale Voxtet enlivens the Library Court with the
music of Benjamin Britten, John Tavener, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and other
composers who found inspiration in Blake’s words.”
Reviews
Arnott,
Christopher. “Cleverly Displayed William Blake Exhibit at Yale Center for
British Arts [
sic] Draws You In.”
Hartford Courant, 21 Sept.
2025,
www.courant.com/2025/09/21/cleverly-displayed-william-blake-burning-bright-exhibit-at-yale-center-for-british-arts-draws-you-in-to-see-some-exquisite-drawings.
Behind a paywall.
Geldzahler, Alex.
“Blake Exhibit at British Art Museum [sic] Showcases Poet’s ‘Infernal
Method.’” Yale Daily News, 15 Sept. 2025, yaledailynews.com/articles/blake-exhibit-at-british-art-museum-showcases-poets-infernal-method.
Guinness,
Meredith. “William Blake’s ‘Singular Vision’ Opens at Yale Center for British
Art in New Haven.” CT Examiner, 27 Aug. 2025, ctexaminer.com/2025/08/27/william-blakes-singular-vision-opens-at-yale-center-for-british-art-in-new-haven.
Sanchez, Isabella,
and Alex Geldzahler. “New YCBA Blake Exhibit Inspires English Seminar.” Yale
Daily News, 8 Sept. 2025, yaledailynews.com/articles/new-ycba-blake-exhibit-inspires-english-seminar. The seminar was “Word
and Image from William Blake to Claudia Rankine.”
Scott, Chadd. “William
Blake Exhibition at Yale Center for British Art.” See Great Art, 23 Aug.
2025, www.seegreatart.art/william-blake-exhibition-at-yale-center-for-british-art.
Slattery, Brian.
“Portraits by the Poet as a Working Artist.” New Haven Independent, 15
Sept. 2025, www.newhavenindependent.org/2025/09/15/ycba_william_blake.
Warm, Hudson.
“Yale Center for British Art Illuminates William Blake’s Imagination in
‘Burning Bright.’” Observer, 23 Sept. 2025, observer.com/2025/09/exhibition-review-yale-center-for-british-art-william-blake-burning-bright.
“William Blake:
Burning Bright.” Apollo, 22 Aug. 2025, apollo-magazine.com/william-blake-burning-bright-yale-center-for-british-art-preview.
“William Blake,
Poet, Prophet, Painter on View at New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art.” TCA
Regional News, 25 Sept. 2025.
Y
Yagi, Jukichi. Yagi
Jukichi Shishu [The Poetical Works of Jukichi Yagi]. Edited by
Eisuke Wakamatsu, Iwanami Shoten, 2025. 363 pp. ISBN: 9784003123614. In
Japanese. Jukichi Yagi (1898–1927) was a Japanese poet who was inspired by
Blake, Keats, and Christianity, as well as Japanese classical lyrics. This
collection includes “To Blake,” a short poem, and his Japanese translations of
“Introduction” (Songs of Innocence) and “Infant Joy” (290, 330-35).
Yarberry, S.
“Writing Robert Blake.” European Romantic Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2025, pp.
341-58, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2025.2494352. An innovative
essay on trans identity and its relationship to history, the archive, and the
self. “I reflect critically on writing The Robert Poems, my
manuscript-in-progress that reimagines Robert Blake, the brother of poet
William Blake, as a trans man during the eighteenth century. The essay is
broken into four crucial parts: (1) Dream; (2) Prophecy; (3) Desire; and (4)
Star. Each section shows, in a different vein, how William Blake’s work unfolds
valuable considerations akin to transness before transness as we understand it
today existed” (abstract).
Yoder, Rodney, Juliette
Wells, and Avery Yoder-Wells. “Revisiting Mrs. Bingley’s Portrait: The 1813
Exhibition in Spring Gardens and the Case against Mrs Q.” Persuasions
On-Line, vol. 46, no. 1, 2025, https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/volume-46-no-1/yoder-wells. The article
rejects Martha M. Rainbolt’s argument that Jane Austen’s character Jane Bennet
was modeled on the lost painting by Jean-François Hüet-Villiers described in
the catalogue as “Portrait of a Lady,” which is believed to have served as the
basis for Blake’s engraving “Mrs. Q.” The authors stress that whereas Austen
had highlighted the “green ornaments” of the painting in an 1813 letter after
attending the exhibition of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours, the
ribbons in the colored versions of Blake’s print exist in many different colors
and any given print could not therefore be seen as a stand-in for the original
painting. They consider which of the paintings on display in the 1813
exhibition Austen might have focused on, and they suggest that none of
Hüet-Villiers’s paintings exhibited appears to fit either Austen’s description
or the subject of Blake’s print. Finally, they provide the correct name of
Hüet-Villiers’s sitter: Georgiana Lawrell Quentin.
Z
Zamparo, Martina. “‘Albion beheld thy beauty.’ Vala, Jerusalem
and Blake’s Holistic Approach to the Cosmos. ” Le
Simplegadi, no. 19, 2019, pp. 218-36, le-simplegadi.it/it/article/view/3798. In
English (abstract in English and Italian).
“This essay discusses the author’s still
debated approach towards nature and femininity. Vala’s role as a terrifying
goddess of Nature can be reassessed if read in the light of the symbolism of
the Egyptian deity Isis, in its turn associated with the topos of the veil and
with the weaving imagery” (abstract).
Division II: William Blake’s Circle
Barry, James (1741–1806)
History painter
Figgis, Nicola.
“Graeco-Roman Source Material in the Work of Eighteenth-Century Irish Painters
and Draughtsmen in Italy.” Classics Ireland, vol. 31, 2024, pp.
98-128. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27389182. Surveys Barry’s
time in Italy (103-05).
Fitzsimons, Fiona.
“Premiums and Progress—How the Dublin Society Shaped Eighteenth-Century
Ireland.” History Ireland, vol. 33, no. 4, 2025, p. 43. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/27390526. A quick survey
of the society, which awarded Barry a premium.
Bartolozzi, Francesco (1727–1815)
Engraver
Adam, Edina, et
al. Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850. See Adam et
al. under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Alexander, David.
“English Colour-Printed Stipple Engravings, 1774–1800.” See Grasselli and
Savage under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Boydell, Josiah (1752–1817)
Engraver, painter, publisher
Adam, Edina, et
al. Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850. See Adam et
al. under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Cosway, Maria (1760–1838)
Painter, acquaintance of Blake
§ Boucher, Diane. Out
of the Shadows: Rediscovering Maria Cosway. Unicorn Press, 2025. ISBN:
9781916846784.
Review
Tuohy, Thomas.
The
British Art Journal, vol. 25, no. 2, 2025,
britishartjournal.co.uk/maria-cosway-book-review. Maria Cosway’s
“fascinating cosmopolitan life has been brought ‘out of the shadows’ in a
sympathetic, well researched and eminently readable book by Diane Boucher.”
Moyle, Franny. Mrs.
Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great Eighteenth-Century
Women Artists. See Moyle under Kauffman.
Cowper, William (1731–1800)
Poet, hymnist
Crosby, Mark, and
Lisa Gee. “When Hayley Met Cowper: The ‘Private Affections’ of William
the Conqueror!” See Gee and Crosby under Hayley.
Jost, Jacob Sider.
“Paranoia, Diversion, and Semblance in William Cowper.” Modern Language
Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 3, 2025, pp. 241-65,
https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-11838823. “This study
shows how eighteenth-century reading practices—the intensive reading of a
classical and religious canon, paired with extensive reading in ephemeral and
contemporary print—shaped the expression of William Cowper’s lifelong
melancholy and religious despair” (abstract).
Roy, Michaël. “‘Anti-Slavery
Publications Adapted to the Capacity of Children’: What Was Juvenile
Antislavery Literature?” Young Abolitionists: Children of the Antislavery
Movement, by Roy, NYU Press, 2024, pp. 46-80. Uses Cowper’s “The
Negro’s Complaint: A Poem” as one example of juvenile abolitionist literature. (There
are occasional references to Cowper throughout the book.)
Townsend, Chris.
“Taking Poetry Seriously: Abolitionism and the Unheroic Couplet.” ELH,
vol. 92, no. 4, winter 2025, pp. 1019-48. Project Muse,
https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2025.a977603. Beginning with
Cowper’s own “antislavery lyrics” that were written “in the recognisably
light—if not outright comic—form of the anapestic tetrameter couplet,” “[t]his
essay takes the micro-history of the eighteenth-century anapestic couplet,
especially in its relation to antislavery poetry, as a case study in poetry’s
claims to serious thinking” (abstract).
Williams, Jonathan
C. “Cowper Anatomized.” Melancholic Life: Literature Expression and the
Experience of History from Burton to Keats, by Williams, Bloomsbury, 2025, pp.
153-79. An interesting reexamination of Cowper’s melancholia and its role in
motivating his writing: “What does one do when a non-melancholic life is no
longer an option? That question is at the center of this chapter’s discussion
of Cowper, for it is the question that would torment him for the majority of
his adult life. At times, Cowper found peace in the company of animals; at
other times, he found comfort in writing hymns. But what is most remarkable
about Cowper’s work in the early 1780s in particular, as we will see in this
chapter, is his belief that he might be able to put his melancholic disposition
to good use—that he might be able to use it to help him write the kind of
poetry that God himself would love” (153).
Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition
Adam, Edina, and
Jamie Gabbarelli, with Victoria Binder, Mary Broadway, Drew Lash, and Stephanie
Schrader. Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850. Getty
Publications, 2025. ISBN: 9781606069653. The catalogue examines prints and
drawings, aiming “to recover the texture and complexity of their relationship
and to see how perspectives might shift if drawing and printmaking were studied
together” (12). The chapters are organized by the different relationships, encompassing
drawings for prints (preparatory drawings, or modelli); prints executed
after drawings; drawings executed after prints; and hybrid efforts that combine
elements of prints and drawings. Works by Francesco Bartolozzi, Josiah Boydell,
Albrecht Dürer, and Henry Fuseli are discussed.
Bittl, Ann. Tracing
the Collective Endeavors: The Cultural Discourses of Women Printmakers throughout
History. 2025. Claremont Graduate U, PhD dissertation. Chapter 2 considers Angelica
Kauffman (1740–1807), Maria Katharina Prestel (1747–94), Susanna Sledge (c.
1726–after 1790), and Laura Piranesi (1755–85).
Fend, Mechthild,
Jennifer Germann, and Melissa Hyde, editors. Thinking Women and Art in the
Long Eighteenth Century: Strategic Reinterpretations. Amsterdam UP, 2025.
ISBN: 9789048558827. A collection on eighteenth-century women artists, focusing
mostly on Frenchwomen.
Grasselli,
Margaret Morgan, and Elizabeth Savage, editors. Printing Colour, 1700–1830:
Histories, Techniques, Functions, and Receptions. Oxford UP, 2025. ISBN:
9780197267530. In addition to Michael Phillips’s essay on Blake’s color
printing, cited in Division I, Part VI, the most relevant essays are:
Grasselli,
Margaret Morgan, and Elizabeth Savage. “Introduction.” Pp. 1-18. A rationale
for the volume, with discussions of color printing in the era and a history of
scholarship on color printing.
Grasselli,
Margaret Morgan, and Elizabeth Savage. “Tools, Machines, and Techniques for
Colour Printing in Eighteenth-Century Europe.” Pp. 21-51. A very useful
overview of the different means of color printing and “of the inventions and
technical adaptations that made colour printing possible” (21).
Savage, Elizabeth.
“Colour Printing Inks and Colour Inking in Eighteenth-Century Europe.” Pp.
52-70. An examination of “historical colour printing inks” (52).
Stijnman, Ad.
“Colour Letterpress in Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century: A First Survey.”
Pp. 73-83. A “history of colour relief printing ink” (73) and its uses. It
includes “[a] bibliography of publications with colour-printed letterpress,
1697–1829.”
Turner, Simon J.
“Elisha Kirkall and His Proposals for Printing in Chiaroscuro, Natural Colours,
and Tints, 1720–40.” Pp. 84-98. Considers Kirkall (c. 1682–1742), “a pioneering
printmaker-publisher who turned to colour to set himself apart from his competitors”
(84).
Seifert, Christian
Tico. “John Baptist Jackson: Printing Chiaroscuro and Colour Woodcuts in Paris,
Venice, and London.” Pp. 99-116. “This study offers a new overview of Jackson’s
colour printmaking careers” (99).
Banham, Rob.
“Colour for Commerce: Letterpress-Printed Ephemera in Britain, 1700–1830.” Pp.
127-38. “This chapter argues that printed ephemera, and advertising for state
lotteries in particular, played an important role in the development and spread
of colour printing in Britain, making colour printing a part of everyday life
for the first time” (127).
Savage, Elizabeth.
“The Politics of Process Mezzotint: Jacob Christoff Le Blon’s Reputation,
1700–89.” Pp. 141-53. “[T]his study assesses Le Blon’s career and the reception
of his printing techniques” (142).
Nurse, Julia.
“Colouring the Body: Printed Colour in Medical Treatises During the Long
Eighteenth Century.” Pp. 164-75. Examines the use of color in medical
illustrations, including “the significance of partnerships between printmakers
and medical practitioners” (164).
Alexander, David.
“English Colour-Printed Stipple Engravings, 1774–1800.” Pp. 263-73. Discusses
William Wynne Ryland (1733–83), Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807), Jonathan
Spilsbury (1737–1812), Caroline Watson (c. 1760–1814), and Francesco Bartolozzi
(1727–1815).
Stijnman, Ad.
“Anatomy to Embroidery: Intaglio Colour-Printed Illustrations in European Books
and Periodicals, 1700–1850.” Pp. 315-28. “This study presents an introduction
to intaglio colour-printed illustrations in books and periodicals in the long
18th century” (315).
Humfrey, Peter.
“The Picture Collections of the Poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) and His
Siblings.” The British Art Journal, vol. 24, no. 3, 2023, pp. 5-16. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/48760352. Rogers and his siblings
owned works by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Stothard, and John Flaxman.
Jung, Sandro.
“Studies in the Period Illustration of Eighteenth-Century British Literature,
1935–2025.” Literature Compass, vol. 22, no. 4, 2025, 11 pp.,
https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.70039. A useful bibliographic
essay on studies of illustrations of literature, “[e]xcepting satiric
illustration and the work of William Blake” (abstract).
Martinez, Cristina
S., and Cynthia E. Roman, editors. Female Printmakers, Printsellers, and
Print Publishers in the Eighteenth Century: The Imprint of Women, c. 1700–1830.
Cambridge UP, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Review
Levy, Michelle.
ABO:
Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830, vol. 15, no. 2, 2025,
3 pp.,
https://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.15.2.1472. “With this
collection, it is to be hoped that the need to prove women’s presence and
influence in the print trades, and any surprise that women were skilled
printmakers and astute businesswomen, will finally become a thing of the past.”
Monuments in
Conversation: Westminster Abbey in the Long Eighteenth Century. Special issue of Sculpture Journal, edited by Gemma Shearwood, vol. 34, no. 4, 2025. See the
table of contents at arthist.net/archive/51263 and a Q&A
about the issue’s subjects and scope at liverpooluniversitypress.blog/2025/12/01/monuments-in-conversation-inside-the-westminster-abbey-special-issue-of-sculpture-journal. The article on
John Flaxman is annotated below, under Flaxman.
Perry, Lara. “Remembering
What We Have Tried to Forget: Writing the Lives, and Collecting the Works, of
Early Modern Women Artists.” Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies,
New Ventures, edited by Séverine Genieys-Kirk, U of Nebraska P, 2023, pp.
59-82. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.6812462.8. In a
consideration of eighteenth-century women artists, Perry discusses in part Allan
Cunningham’s Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and
Architects, his life of Anne Seymour Damer (1748–1828), and Henry Fuseli’s disparaging
comments on Mary Moser (1744–1819).
Spies-Gans, Paris
A. A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France,
1760–1830. Yale UP, 2022. <Blake (2024)>
Review
Stecher, Gabrielle.
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830, vol. 12, no.
2, 2022, 4 pp.,
https://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.12.2.1326. “[A]n
indispensable volume for art historians and scholars of the long-eighteenth
century.”
Cunningham, Allan (1784–1842)
Biographer
Perry, Lara.
“Remembering What We Have Tried to Forget: Writing the Lives, and Collecting
the Works, of Early Modern Women Artists.” See Perry under Cultures and
Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Darwin, Erasmus (1731–1802)
Scientist, poet
Darwin, Erasmus. The
Loves of the Plants. Edited by Tristanne Connolly, Elizabeth Bernath, and
Alana Rigby, Romantic Circles, 2025, romantic-circles.org/editions/loves-plants. “The text
presented here fundamentally consists of a diplomatic transcription of the 1790
edition.” As Connolly points out, this approach differs from that adopted by
Adam Komisaruk and Allison Dushane’s 2017 edition of The Botanic Garden
<Blake (2018)>, which employs “the principles of a traditional
eclectic copy-text edition, giving priority to the author’s intentions for the
first edition. Thus, they choose [The Loves of the Plants] 1789 and The
Economy of Vegetation 1791 as copy texts and present later variants in
separate textual notes. This Romantic Circles edition gives a different
version on different principles, being based on [The Loves of the Plants]
1790 and integrating later variants into the reading text.”
In addition to the
text and the informative endnotes (the footnotes are Darwin’s own), there is
also a facsimile. Useful appendices lay out the different versions of the poem;
botanical information and terms used by Darwin; related texts by Darwin; Anna
Seward’s reaction to the poem and Darwin; Romantic-era responses to the poem;
and a bibliography.
Kiba, Shuta.
“Erasmus Darwin and the Biopolitics of the Vital Habit.” Studies in
Romanticism, vol. 64, no. 1, spring 2025, pp. 1-25. Project Muse,
https://doi.org/10.1353/srm.2025.a958613. “This essay
investigates the vitalistic theory of habit formulated by Edinburgh physicians,
especially Erasmus Darwin. In so doing, it elucidates how Darwin envisioned the
epigenetic transmission of acquired habits to facilitate the gradual
improvement and progressive transformation of the human species” (abstract).
Ovcharova,
Ekaterina. “Nauchnaya paradigma Erazma Darvina v romane Bonaventury ‘Nochnye
bdeniya’ (‘Nachtwachen,’ 1805) [Erasmus Darwin’s
Scientific Paradigm in Bonaventura’s Novel Nachtwachen (1805)].” Romano-germanskie literatury: traditsii i sovremennost'. Materialy IV Mezhdunarodnoy nauchnoy konferentsii, XXXVII Mezhdunarodnoy
nauchnoy konferentsii RAPAL, posvyashchennoy 100-letiyu N. P. Mikhal'skoy [Romano-Germanic
Literatures: Tradition and Modernity. Proceedings
of the IV International Scientific Conference, XXXVII International Scientific
Conference RAPAL, Dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of N. P. Mikhalskaya],
2025, pp. 188-90, elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=86311849. In
Russian. The author asks questions about the ways that Darwin was known to Bonaventura,
who mentions his works.
d’Éon, Chevalier/Chevalière (1728–1810)
Spy
Klein, Ula Lukszo.
“Queer Spectacles and the Trans Celebrity of Mademoiselle la Chevalière d’Eon.”
European Romantic Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2025, pp. 229-45, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2025.2494344. “This article
re-evaluates d’Eon’s legacy as a trans woman and trans celebrity; further, it
explores how d’Eon cultivated her celebrity image both before and after her
transition to public life as a woman as well as how her claims to both
transmasculine and transfeminine identity make her a unique case study in trans
celebrity of the past” (abstract).
Flaxman, John (1755–1826)
Sculptor, friend of Blake
Humfrey, Peter.
“The Picture Collections of the Poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) and His
Siblings.” See Humfrey under Cultures and Technologies of Display and
Exhibition.
Riccardi,
Silvia. “Fuseli’s Bodies in Agony.” See Riccardi under Fuseli.
Smith,
Michael. “From Memorial to Museum Piece?: John Flaxman’s Monument to George
Lindsay Johnstone.” Sculpture Journal, vol. 34, no. 4, 2025,
https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2025.34.4.10. “This article
uses John Flaxman’s monument to the politician George Lindsay Johnstone to
consider the importance of the smaller monuments in the Westminster Abbey
pantheon and, more generally, the importance of the relationship between
sculpture and space” (abstract).
Fuseli, Henry [Johann Heinrich Füssli] (1741–1825)
Painter, friend of Blake
Adam, Edina, et
al. Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850. See Adam et
al. under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Baker,
Christopher. Creator of Nightmares: Henry Fuseli’s Art and Life.
Reaktion Books, 2025. ISBN: 9781789149302. A biography of Fuseli aimed at a
popular audience. The characterization of Blake’s relationship with Fuseli suggests
it was more strained than the evidence would indicate.
Review
Carter, Maxwell.
The
Wall Street Journal, 7 Feb. 2025. “
Creator of Nightmares is lean and
engaging, in many ways an ideal introduction to the painter.”
Pastor Paris, Juan Francisco. Estudios sobre Fuseli.
Casimiro Libros, 2025. 240 pp. ISBN: 9788419524409. In Spanish. A collection of essays on Fuseli.
Riccardi, Silvia.
“Fuseli’s Bodies in Agony.” Dark Romanticism, by Riccardi, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2025, pp. 39-87. ISBN: 9783031643651. Largely on the illustrations
to Dante and their depictions of bodies, with some discussion of A Woman
before the Laocoön and The Nightmare.
Sorokina, D. S.
“Kompozitsii Genri Fyuzeli k p'esam Uil'yama Shekspira: avtorskoe videnie
istoricheskogo zhanra [Henry Fuseli’s Compositions
for William Shakespeare’s Plays: The Author’s Vision of the Historical Genre].” Mir
kul''tury glazami molodykh issledovateley [The World
of Culture through the Eyes of Young Researchers], 2025, pp. 116-19,
elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=82691382. In Russian. The
author analyzes the features of Shakespeare’s imagery in Fuseli’s pictorial
interpretation.
Hayley, William (1745–1820)
Man of letters, patron of Blake
Gee, Lisa. HayleyWorld,
hayleyworld.space. An interactive
zoeography of Hayley that aims to capture the sociability of his life and
writing. Users are asked to provide their name and select topics of interest
that navigate them to biographical information (in the first person), illustrations,
photos, and activities. Gee chronicles the development of the site in “Making HayleyWorld”
(see Gee and Crosby, below).
Gee, Lisa, and
Mark Crosby, editors. William Hayley: A Biographer’s Influence on Life
Writing and Romantic Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2025. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. ISBN: 9783031683046. A
wonderful collection of essays about Hayley and his relationship to Blake,
William Cowper, George Romney, Anna Seward, the miniaturist Jeremiah Meyer, John
Milton, and Dante. The works cited section is a useful resource for locating
Hayley’s letters and manuscripts.
Crosby, Mark, and
Lisa Gee. “Introduction: ‘Another Honest Chronicler.’” Pp. 1-22.
Part I: Hayley as
Life-Writing Subject
Whittaker, Jason,
and Annise Rogers. “‘Be My Enemy for Friendship’s Sake’: Hayley and Blake’s
Biographers.” Pp. 25-44. An examination of how Hayley has been depicted,
oftentimes unfairly, by Blake’s biographers from Gilchrist to Whittaker’s own Divine
Images and Jerusalem: Blake, Parry, and the Fight for Englishness.
Gee, Lisa. “Making
HayleyWorld.” Pp. 45-64. An account of how Gee conceptualized and
developed her digital zoeography of Hayley, HayleyWorld, hayleyworld.space.
Knaus, Peter, with
Lisa Gee. “The Life Story of an Ambitious Opera Project.” Pp. 65-77. Considers
Hayley’s relationship with the miniaturist Jeremiah Meyer (1735–89); their
collaboration on an English translation of the German opera Der Irrwisch;
and the adaptation that became Hayley’s The Trial of the Rock.
Part II: Hayley as
Life-Writer
Crosby, Mark, and
Lisa Gee. “When Hayley Met Cowper: The ‘Private Affections’ of William
the Conqueror!” Pp. 81-111. An important new account of Hayley and Cowper’s
relationship.
Matthews, Susan.
“William Hayley and the Father’s Memoir: ‘Being Temperate.’” Pp. 113-34. A
detailed survey of Thomas Alphonso Hayley’s short life and of William Hayley’s
efforts to write his son’s memoir. There are references to George Romney and
John Flaxman, as well as important comparisons between Hayley’s work and Benjamin
Heath Malkin’s A Father’s Memoirs of His Child (1806) (132-34).
Barsham, Diana.
“William Hayley and Jane Austen: A Biographical Romance.” Pp. 135-61. Highlights
how the writers influenced each other and identifies parallels in their work,
making the case that The Watsons may have characters based on Hayley and
his circle.
Riccardi, Silvia.
“Hayley’s Biography of Dante.” Pp. 163-77. An overdue study of Hayley’s engagement
with Dante in An Essay on Epic Poetry, with a discussion of Blake’s Head
of Dante in relationship to Thomas Stothard and the “Ugolino fever” spurred
by Joshua Reynolds’s Count Ugolino and His Sons in the Tower of Hunger (1773)
(172).
Gee, Lisa. “‘A
Systematically Immoral Man’: William Hayley, His Wives and Lovers.” Pp. 179-214.
Gee details the lives of “the five women with whom William Hayley contracted
engagements, married or fathered children” (179). “They, no less than Hayley,
deserve their honest chroniclers” (214).
Part III:
Perspectives
Crosby, Mark.
“William Hayley: Milton Biographer and ‘Violent Republican.’” Pp. 217-46. A
reconsideration of Hayley’s two versions of The Life of Milton (1794,
1796) to position Hayley’s own political engagements in the context of
debates over the French Revolution and of the 1794 treason trials. There is a
slight reference to the frontispiece of Blake’s America, a Prophecy (231),
and to Mary Wollstonecraft’s and Thomas Paine’s responses to Edmund Burke (224-27).
Paley, Morton D.
“William Hayley and the Paintings of George Romney.” Pp. 247-64. On the men’s
relationship, highlighting Romney’s two portraits of Hayley and the five paintings
of Serena from The Triumphs of Temper.
Kairoff, Claudia
Thomas. “Anna Seward, William Hayley, and George Romney: Portraits of a Poet.” Pp.
265-86. A biographical sketch of Seward, addressing Romney’s portraits of her and
her friendships with Romney and Hayley.
Blanch-Serrat,
Francesca. “‘I Was Anxious to Counteract the Unpleasant Intelligence’:
Recovering Eliza Hayley.” Pp. 287-309. Blanch-Serrat recovers the life of Eliza
Hayley in her own words, moving beyond William Hayley’s representation of her.
“At the hands of William, Hayley is presented as a one-dimensional character, a
woman twice robbed of her agency and entirely dependent on her estranged
husband both literally—for her survival while alive—and metaphorically—for her
post-humous image” (307).Blanch-Serrat intentionally switches the convention of referring to the male writer by his last name and “his” wife by her first name (288).
Shrimpton,
Nicholas. “Hayley and Blake Revisited.” Pp. 311-32. A retelling of Blake and
Hayley’s relationship, concluding that “[Blake’s] intellectual debt to Hayley
was real and considerable” (332).
Kidson, Alex, and
Morton D. Paley, with contributions by Mark Crosby and Lisa Gee. “Hayley,
Romney, and Blake: A Conversation.” Pp. 333-59. An edited transcription of a
conversation between Kidson and Paley that took place on 29 Mar. and 12 Apr. 2022.
Review
Nomura, Risako.
ABO:
Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830, vol. 15, no. 2, 2025,
3 pp.,
https://doi.org/10.5038/2157-7129.15.2.1464. The book “makes
excellent contributions to scholarship on women’s writing by exploring the
impact of Hayley’s various works—essays, poems, and biographies—on Seward and
Austen as well as Eliza Hayley’s identity as an intellectual in depth,” but the
“volume would have benefitted from including a chapter on Hayley’s relationship
with Charlotte Smith” (3, 2).
Hope, Thomas (1769–1831)
Collector, connoisseur
Wilson,
David. “Portrait Busts of Thomas Hope’s Wife and Sons by Bertel Thorvaldsen,
and Hope’s Commissions to Lorenzo Bartolini.” Sculpture Journal, vol.
34, no. 3, 2025, pp. 299-326,
https://doi.org/10.3828/sj.2025.34.3.05. “This article
considers afresh Thorvaldsen’s busts of Hope family members. It also confirms
an earlier proposed identification of the sitter (not a member of Hope’s
family) for a model bust in Thorvaldsen’s Museum, while establishing that a
marble version of that bust entered the Hope family collection, probably
through ties of friendship” (abstract).
Kauffman, Angelica [Angelika Kauffmann] (1741–1807)
Painter
Alexander, David.
“English Colour-Printed Stipple Engravings, 1774–1800.” See Grasselli and
Savage under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Bittl,
Ann. Tracing the Collective Endeavors: The Cultural Discourses of Women
Printmakers throughout History. See Bittl under Cultures and Technologies
of Display and Exhibition.
Moyle,
Franny. Mrs. Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Entwined Lives of Two Great
Eighteenth-Century Women Artists. Apollo, 2025. ISBN: 9781801107440. A rich
historical study of the two painters. In addition to surveying Kauffman’s life
and art, the work explores her connections with the Cosways, Mary Moser, the
Royal Academy, and many other major artists.
Primo,
Leslie. “Angelica Kauffman: The Grand Tour and the Europeanization of British
Art.” The Foreign Invention of British Art, by Primo, Thames and Hudson,
2025, pp. 231-48. Examines how Kauffman brought neoclassicism and other elements
of the European arts scene to Britain.
Roworth, Wendy Wassyng. “Close Encounters and Stranger Things: Angelica Kauffman’s First Years in
London.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, vol. 54, 2025, pp.
109-32. Project Muse,
https://doi.org/10.1353/sec.2025.a951743. A detailed
account of Kauffman’s first two years in London (1766–68). It includes a
reproduction of a previously unpublished Kauffman painting, Augustus Hermann
Brandenburg or Brande (1767).
Linnell, John (1792–1882)
Painter, friend and patron of Blake
Crosby,
Mark. “Blake in the Marketplace, 2024.” See Blake 58.4 in Division I,
Part VI.
Fiddes,
Paul S. “Is Blake Also among the Baptists? Freedom from the Law in William
Blake, John Bunyan, and Baptist Thinking.” See Fiddes in Division I, Part VI.
Whelan,
Timothy. “Samuel Palmer and the Baptists.” See Whelan under Palmer.
Wilson,
Louise. “William Blake and the NGV: The History of the Virgil Wood Engravings.”
See Wilson, “William Blake,” in Division I, Part VI.
Malkin, Benjamin (1769–1842)
Writer
Matthews,
Susan. “William Hayley and the Father’s Memoir: ‘Being Temperate.’” See Gee and
Crosby under Hayley.
Mora, José Joaquín de (1783–1864)
Polymath, politician
Martínez Mansilla,
Antonio. Las revoluciones de un liberal. José Joaquín de Mora (1783–1864). Centro de
Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2025. 447 pp. ISBN: 9788425920981. In
Spanish. A new academic monograph on Mora, with recent findings.
Moravianism
Apesos, Anthony.
“Blake’s Petworth House Last Judgment and Female Anatomy.” See Apesos in
Division I, Part VI.
Palmer, Samuel (1805–81)
Painter, disciple of Blake
Whelan, Timothy.
“Samuel Palmer and the Baptists.” Baptist Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 2, 2026,
pp. 99-120, https://doi.org/10.1080/0005576X.2025.2542057. “This essay examines the early years of the Romantic artist, Samuel Palmer (1805–81), from
his birth to his time in Shoreham and his friendship
with William Blake, using private letters and diaries, church minute
books, Poor Rate Books, and genealogical records relating to the Palmer family
c. 1790–1830” (abstract). A very detailed account that stresses Palmer’s
Baptist connections, with references to John Linnell, George Richmond, the
Varley brothers, and Blake.
Reynolds, Joshua (1723–92)
Painter
Belyakov, Nikolay. “Vliyanie idey prosveshcheniya na tvorcheskoe nasledie Dzhoshua Reynol''dsa [The
Influence of Enlightenment Ideas on the Creative Legacy of Joshua Reynolds].” Filosofiya gumanitarnogo znaniya: granitsy cheloveka i gorizonty poznaniya [Philosophy
of Humanitarian Knowledge: The Limits of Humanity and the Horizons of Knowledge], 2025, pp. 35-41,
elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=82730054. In Russian
(abstract in Russian and English). The article shows the meaning of Reynolds’s aesthetical
views for the development of classicism.
Humfrey, Peter.
“The Picture Collections of the Poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) and His
Siblings.” See Humfrey under Cultures and Technologies of Display and
Exhibition.
Perini Folesani,
Giovanna. “An Unpublished Letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds.” The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 167, June 2025, pp. 575-78. A letter dated 20 May 1785 that
was found in the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence. It is in Italian, which—Perini
Folesani suggests—indicates that Reynolds copied it after a professional translator.
The recipient is not known, but may be the president of the Florentine Academy.
The letter thanks the academy for the gift of Regolamento della Reale
Accademia delle Belle Arti stabilita in Firenze con benigno motu proprio di Sua
Altezza Reale del di 3 ottobre 1784 (1784), which updated “the
time-honoured statutes of the Florentine academy” (576). It notifies the academy
of two Royal Academy students who will be coming to Florence, John Deare (1759–98)
and John Charles Felix Rossi (1762–1839).
Pollitt, Ben.
“Clocking Mai: A Study of Time in Reynolds’ Polynesian Portrait.” Art
History, vol. 43, no. 2, 2025, pp. 298-318,
https://doi.org/10.1093/arthis/ulaf014. “The case is
made that, in the portrayal of the figure, Reynolds’ painting engages in a
historical methodology whose arguments are grounded on the denial of the coeval
presence of non-European people.… A very different relationship between the
subject and the landscape is revealed when considering the painting through
Polynesian concepts of time, bringing to bear, in particular, the enduring
coexistence between the ahistorical time-space of the po and
the earthly temporality of the ao” (abstract).
Primo, Leslie.
“Joshua Reynolds: Grand Manner Portraiture and the Legacy of Mai.” The
Foreign Invention of British Art, by Primo, Thames and Hudson, 2025, pp.
209-30. In a book that documents how foreign artists or figures influenced the
course of British art, this chapter highlights the life of Mai in relationship
to Reynolds’s portrait of him and to broader ideas of race and empire
structuring the genre of portraiture.
Rothschild, Loren.
“Sir Joshua Reynolds.” The Age of Johnson: The Library of Loren and Frances
Rothschild, by Loren Rothschild, Kulturalis, 2025, pp. 264-73. Descriptions
of items from the Rothschild Samuel Johnson collection, including Reynolds’s
correspondence with Johnson, books from Reynolds’s library, and early editions
of the Discourses.
Schaffer, Simon.
“Blake’s Lawgiving, Newton’s System, Reynolds’s Justice.” See Blake 59.2
in Division I, Part VI.
Romney, George (1734–1802)
Painter
Kairoff, Claudia
Thomas. “Anna Seward, William Hayley, and George Romney: Portraits of a Poet.” See
Gee and Crosby under Hayley.
Kidson, Alex, and
Morton D. Paley, with contributions by Mark Crosby and Lisa Gee. “Hayley,
Romney, and Blake: A Conversation.” See Gee and Crosby under Hayley.
Matthews, Susan.
“William Hayley and the Father’s Memoir: ‘Being Temperate.’” See Gee and Crosby
under Hayley.
Paley, Morton D.
“William Hayley and the Paintings of George Romney.” See Gee and Crosby under Hayley.
Romney: Brilliant
Contrasts in Georgian England, britishart.yale.edu/exhibitions-programs/romney-brilliant-contrasts-georgian-england. An exhibition
held at the Yale University Art Gallery from 28 Mar. to 19 Oct. 2025. No
catalogue was produced, but the web page for the exhibition includes selected
images of the paintings and drawings displayed.More images are available in an Instagram post from the Yale Center for British Art, www.instagram.com/p/DHvZYybOvAQ.
Reviews
Arnott,
Christopher. “Yale University Art Gallery Brings Eighteenth Century Artist
George Romney into the Twenty-First Century.”
Hartford Courant, 12 July
2025. Behind a paywall.
Budick, Ariella. “George
Romney at Yale University Art Gallery—Portraits of a Restless Mind.”
Financial
Times, 18 Aug. 2025. “[A] small but potent exhibition.”
Davenport, Meagan. “Now (Re-)Open: The Yale Center for British Art.”
The Chapter House, 24
Apr. 2025,
thechapterhouse.substack.com/p/now-re-open-the-yale-center-for-british. A review of the Turner and Romney exhibitions at Yale.
Gardner, James.
“Exhibitions: Georgian Portraiture in New Haven.”
Antiques: The Magazine,
23 July 2025,
www.themagazineantiques.com/article/georgian-portraiture-in-new-haven.
Geldzahler, Alex.
“George Romney Exhibit Showcases the Portraitist’s Range.”
Yale Daily News,
23 Sept. 2025,
yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/09/23/george-romney-exhibit-showcases-the-portraitists-range. Includes a photo
of the exhibition and the position of Kehinde Wiley’s
Portrait of Lynette
Yiadom-Boakye, Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite, which is “based on Romney’s
‘Portrait of Jacob Morland of Capplethwaite.’”
Ryland, William Wynne (bap. 1733–83)
Painter, engraver, would-be master of Blake
Alexander, David.
“English Colour-Printed Stipple Engravings, 1774–1800.” See Grasselli and
Savage under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Stedman, John Gabriel (1744–97)
Soldier, writer, friend of Blake
Bennett, Bridget. “Mobile
Moravians and British Antislavery.” See Bennett in Division I, Part VI.
Castellano, Katey.
“Maroon Settlements as Abolitionist Commons: Nanny of the Maroons, R. C.
Dallas’s History of the Maroons, and J. G. Stedman’s Narrative of a
Five Years’ Expedition.” See Castellano in Division I, Part VI.
Chow, Jeremy.
“Stedman’s Myrmecology: Decolonizing Analogy in Suriname.” The Eighteenth
Century, vol. 65, nos. 1-2, spring-summer 2024, pp. 23-41. Project Muse,
https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2024.a961700. Stedman
“racializes insect bodies and insectivizes blackened bodies” (26).
Oostrum, Duco van.
“Autobiography, Critical Fabulation, and African Voices in the Archive of Dutch
Slavery: John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative (1790; 1796) and Joachim
Nettelbeck’s Ein Mann (1910).” Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low
Countries Studies, vol. 49, no. 3, 2025, pp. 228-48, https://doi.org/10.1080/03096564.2025.2564033. “In this
article, I examine the print ‘A Group of Africans’ from John Gabriel’s
Stedman’s Narrative, one the most iconic images of Surinamese
slavery and the transatlantic slave-trade. Inspired by Hartman’s research
methodology of critical fabulation, I explore archival sources,
autobiographies, and other texts depicting African voices to provide the people
depicted in the painting with context and specificity about their capture and
appearance now on the shore of Suriname” (abstract).
Stothard, Thomas (1755–1834)
Painter, illustrator, friend-enemy of Blake
Humfrey, Peter.
“The Picture Collections of the Poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) and His
Siblings.” See Humfrey under Cultures and Technologies of Display and
Exhibition.
Taylor, Thomas (1758–1835)
Neoplatonist
Kovalev, Maksim.
“Britanskiy platonik T. Teylor—‘zabytyy’ pamfletist epokhi frantsuzskoy
revolyutsii [The British Platonist T. Taylor—A ‘Forgotten’ Pamphleteer of the Era
of the French Revolution].” Vestnik Severo-vostochnogo gosudarstvennogo
universiteta. Istoriya [Bulletin of North-Eastern State University. History], vol. 6, no. 4, 2025, pp. 26-35,
elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=86110504. In Russian
(abstract in Russian and English). “The article is devoted to the analysis of
the political pamphlet ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes’ (1791) by the
British Platonic philosopher Thomas Taylor in the context of the intellectual
debates of the era of the French Revolution.… The paper reveals the paradoxical
nature of the pamphlet: formally representing a satire on M. Wollstonecraft’s
treatise ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women,’ it simultaneously contains a
complex philosophical argument based on the ideas of Neoplatonism and ancient
theology.… The pamphlet is interpreted as a unique attempt to assert the
apolitical nature of pure philosophy in an era of acute ideological
confrontation” (abstract).
Watson, Caroline (1760/61–1814)
Engraver
Alexander, David.
“English Colour-Printed Stipple Engravings, 1774–1800.” See Grasselli and
Savage under Cultures and Technologies of Display and Exhibition.
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–97)
Author, radical, known in Blake’s circle
Ayres,
Brenda. Becoming Wollstonecraft: The Interconnection of Her Life and
Works. Routledge, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Review
Kraft, E.
Choice,
vol. 62, no. 4, 2024. “
Becoming Wollstonecraft provides readers with an
entree into the vexations attendant on reconciling the author’s life and works.”
Canuel, Mark.
“Dissenting Formalism.” New Literary History, vol. 56, no. 3, summer
2025, pp. 473-94. “Studies of literary form often intentionally separate
themselves from a study of religious history. This essay takes the work of Mary
Wollstonecraft as an opportunity to explore the intersection of form and religious
orientation” (abstract).
Kirkley,
Laura. Mary Wollstonecraft: Cosmopolitan. Edinburgh UP, 2022. <Blake
(2025)>
Review
Hofkosh, Sonia.
European
Romantic Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2025, pp. 143-49,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2025.2454780. With Catherine
Packham,
Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy: The Feminist Critique of
Commercial Modernity.
Mastro, N. J. Solitary
Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft. Black Rose Writing, 2025. ISBN:
9781685135614.
Packham,
Catherine. Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy: The Feminist
Critique of Commercial Modernity. Cambridge UP, 2024. <Blake (2025)>
Reviews
Delucia, Joellen.
Eighteenth-Century
Studies, vol. 59, no. 2, winter 2026, pp. 296-97.
Project Muse,
https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2026.a981560. “Packham finds a
nascent feminist economics in Wollstonecraft and calls for a return to the type
of interdisciplinary analysis that she so successfully models and finds in her
subject’s work” (296).
Hofkosh, Sonia. See
under Kirkley, above.
McInnes, Andrew.
The
Wordsworth Circle, vol. 55, no. 3, 2024, pp. 350-54.
Plotnikov,
Aleksey. “Meri Uolstonkraft. Nachalo aktsidental''nogo povorota novogo vremeni
v gendernom podkhode v pedagogike [Mary Wollstonecraft. The Beginning of the
Accidental Turn of the Modern Age in the Gender Approach to Pedagogy].” Aktual''nost''
istoriko-pedagogicheskogo prosveshcheniya dlya razvitiya otechestvennoy
pedagogiki i sistemy rossiyskogo obrazovaniya [The Relevance of
Historical and Pedagogical Education for the Development of Domestic Pedagogy
and the Russian Education System], 2025, pp. 462-66, elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=82893988. In Russian
(abstract in Russian and English). The author examines Wollstonecraft as a
philosopher of the Enlightenment, a theorist, and a practitioner of pedagogy
and of the gender approach in pedagogy.
Vigus, James. “‘Ambition!
And the Desire to become a Millionaire!’ Mary Wollstonecraft, John Parish, and
Hamburg Capitalism.” European Romantic Review, vol. 36, no. 4, 2025, pp.
539-53, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509585.2025.2576284. On the economic context
of Wollstonecraft’s reaction to Hamburg in Letters Written During a Short
Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796).