Songs of Innocence and of Experience.
Manchester: Manchester Etching Workshop, 1983.
4to, 16 hand coloured and one uncoloured facsimile plates, each mounted on brown card in a full brown morocco 3-part folding binding with gilt embossed replicas of the "Innocence" and "Experience" title pages as decorations on two of the covers. Fine as issued, all in a deep brown cloth folding box.
§ The colored facsimile volume only (as issued). De luxe issue of the limited edition of 40 copies, this being #V of V (i.e. five) copies with an extra plate ("Infant Sorrow"). Accompanied by Joseph Viscomi's " The Art Of William Blake's Illuminated Prints" as part of the edition, but this limited to 200 copies. Bentley, Blake Books Supplement 135. Essick, Blake Quarterly, Summer 1985: "In many ways one of the most accurate facsimiles ever published, and beyond question the most accurate hand-colored reproduction of plates from an illuminated book. To my eyes, it is also one of the two or three most beautiful facsimiles when considered as a work of graphic art". In this set is a letter from the printer Paul Ritchie stating that there were only five copies thus, 4 went to people on the project and this copy to L.G. Bell the late collector of editions of Blake's "Songs" Item #122884
Price: $6,750.00