The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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Recommended: The Life and Works of William Blake

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Although many of the Romantic poets displayed a high degree of anxiety concerning the way in which their works were produced and transmitted to an audience, few, if any, fretted quite as much as William Blake did. Being also a highly accomplished engraver and printer, he was certainly the only one of the Romantics to be able to completely move beyond mere fretting. Others may have used their status or wealth to exert their influence upon the production process, but ultimately, they were at the mercy of editors, publishers, and printers and relied on others to turn their visions into published works. Blake, on the other hand, was his own editor, engraver, printer, and publisher. He was able to control to the minutest detail every single aspect of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from conception all the way to the selling of the finished volume. Short of being his own purchaser, Blake achieved the highest possible degree of control over the work’s transmission, and considering that there are only nine known complete copies of the work (twelve total including variants and uncolored prints), even the audience itself was almost handpicked (Ackroyd, 265).

“I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans/ I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create”, he wrote, and create he did (Ackroyd, 113). Spurning the common intaglio method of etching in which indented lines formed designs on plates, Blake invented a novel process of printing in relief in which the designs were actually raised above the surface of the plate. Blake was very proud of this method and staked a great deal of faith and hope in it. “I have invented a method of Printing both Letterpress and Engraving in a style more orna...

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...s. (http://library.ucsc.edu/oac/exhibits/trianon/pub.htm)

The William Blake Archive. (http://www.blakearchive.org)

Timeline of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. (http://www.wam.umd.edu/~bossert/blaketl.html)

Printed sources Ackroyd, Peter. Blake. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Bindman, David. “A review of Robert N. Essick’s William Blake’s Relief Inventions.” Blake: an illustrated quarterly #54. 14 (2), fall 1980. pg. 106-107.

Essick, Robert N. “Blake in the Marketplace 1980-1981.” Blake: an illustrated quarterly #61. 16 (1), summer 1982. pg 86-87.

Hagstrum, Jean H. William Blake: Poet and Painter. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964.

Maclagan, ERD & Russel, AGB, eds. The Prophetic Books of William Blake. Jerusalem. London: A. H. Bullen, 1904.

Witcutt, W. P. Blake: A Psychological Study. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1966.

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