Poetical Sketches. Now first reprinted from the original edition of 1783 edited and prefaced by Richard Herne Shepherd.
1868. London: Pickering, 1868.
Small 8vo, xiv, 96 pp. A good copy in original cloth, with a small amount of wear at spine ends, and the paper label on spine darkened and with two small chips. Rear end paper slightly foxed and one or two spots on occasional pages, but internally the book is a clean copy with just a touch of dusting to page edges. Small bookplate of John Johnson on front pastedown.
§ First printing after the exceedingly rare edition of 1783 known in about 24 copies. Bentley, BB, 129. “The original 1783 copies were seventy-two pages in length, printed in octavo by John Flaxman's aunt, who owned a small print shop in the Strand, and paid for by Anthony Stephen Mathew and his wife Harriet, dilettantes to whom Blake had been introduced by Flaxman in early 1783. Each individual copy was hand-stitched, with a grey back and a blue cover, reading "POETICAL SKETCHES by W.B." It was printed without a table of contents and many pages were without half titles. Of the extant copies, eleven contain corrections in Blake's handwriting. Poetical Sketches is one of only two works by Blake to be printed conventionally with typesetting; the only other extant work is The French Revolution in 1791, which was to be published by Joseph Johnson. However, it never got beyond the proof copy, and was thus not actually published.
Even given the modest standards by which the book was published, it was something of a failure. Alexander Gilchrist noted that the publication contained several obvious misreadings and numerous errors in punctuation, suggesting that it was printed with little care and was not proofread by Blake (thus the numerous handwritten corrections in printed copies). Gilchrist also notes that it was never mentioned in the Monthly Review, even in the magazine's index of "Books noticed", which listed every book published in London each month, signifying that the publication of the book had gone virtually unnoticed. Nevertheless, Blake himself was proud enough of the volume that he was still giving copies to friends as late as 1808, and when he died, several unstitched copies were found amongst his belongings.” (Wikipedia). Item #108778
Price: $250.00