Mark Crosby and Josephine A. McQuail, editors, William Blake’s Manuscripts: Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests

In their introduction, “‘Writing Is the Divine Revelation,’” Crosby and McQuail sketch out the subject matter to come. Their discussion includes the inscription in the lower right-hand corner of a preparatory drawing for plate 14 of the Job engravings (“When the Morning Stars Sang Together”). Blake wrote “done by” followed by five symbols: a straight line, a hand, a capital B, an eye, and a circle with large dotlike marks outside its two o’clock and seven o’clock positions. The authors pose a number of questions arising from this hieroglyphic signature and the possible reasons for Blake’s placing it there. Other manuscripts touched on in this introduction include Vala or The Four Zoas, some of the poems drafted in Blake’s Notebook, selections from his marginalia, and his sole engraving on glass. Some pages of illuminated books are also manuscripts, Crosby and McQuail suggest, if we assume that they were composed directly on the plates. In conclusion, the authors explain the classification principles behind the three-part division of the fourteen papers that follow.