William Blake (1757-1827)
Prospectus of a new and elegant edition of Blair's Grave. London: printed by T. Bensley, November 1805.
3pp. letterpress, quarto (239 x 135mm), bifolium, integral address panel to ‘Mr Tomkinson, Dean Street, Soho’, remains of seal, on wove paper watermarked ‘J. Whatman 1804’ (folded for delivery as a letter, a few trivial marks). Provenance: ‘Mr Tomkinson, Dean Street, Soho’ (probably Thomas Tomkison (c.1764-1853), Piano maker and art collector who operated from Dean Street, Soho between 1799 and 1851; possibly forwarded by him to John Towneley:) – sold as part of The Towneley Papers, Sotheby’s, 22-23 July 1985, lot 550.

One of only a few copies in private hands of the first prospectus for Robert Blair’s The Grave (1808), announcing the designs for which Blake was best known in his lifetime.

Blake’s involvement in the production of The Grave was the occasion of a bitter dispute between him and the publisher Robert Hartley Cromek (1770-1812), who had originally commissioned the artist not only to provide the designs but to engrave them himself. In the event, Cromek employed the more fashionable Louis Schiavonetti (1765-1810) to undertake the engraving, as confirmed in the second printing of the prospectus issued later in November 1805, a copy of which is held at the British Library. Thus, prior to the acquisition by Princeton University Library in 1974 of the only other known example of this first printing, Blake’s claim that he had been cheated out of a lucrative commission to engrave his own designs could not be confirmed. That the text of this first printing clearly states that Cromek’s edition will be ‘Illustrated with Fifteen Prints from Designs Invented and to be Engraved by William Blake’ helps to clarify the murky waters around its genesis.

‘The cost to Blake was enormous; […] he was not paid at all for engraving his designs (for which he might have expected £300-£600 for fifteen plates, several years' income); his designs were translated from his bold and powerful outlines to the graceful and somewhat sentimental shapes of Schiavonetti; he lost the opportunity to appear before a really large contemporary audience in his own most characteristic way, combining his two primary arts of designing and engraving—but he gained a fame which he might not otherwise have had, for the reviews (in bulk largely hostile) uniformly praised Schiavonetti's work’ (Bentley).

The line of text which indicates that Blake is to be the engraver is scored through in the present example. It is inscribed ‘With Mr Cromek's respects’ and, in a different hand, ‘and to be engraved by L. Schiavonetti’, with another note that that the price to non-subscribers will be ‘3.3.0£’. BENTLEY, G.E. ‘A Unique Prospectus for Blake’s Grave Designs’, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 35, No. 3 (SPRING 1974), pp. 321-324.