William Blake Archive: Blake’s Notebook

Used sporadically, first for sketches-among many others, the early illuminated book Songs of Experience, the emblem book Gates of Paradise, and later Jerusalem-and then for more and more poems and prose, from A Vision of the Last Judgment to a projected Public Address on the history and state of engraving to miscellaneous memoranda on his craft-"To Wood cut on Pewter"-and his life- "Tuesday Jan ry . 20. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake imagines a Printing House in Hell whose apocalyptic output- created by dragons, vipers, eagle-like men, and lions of flaming fire-"took the forms of books & were arranged in libraries" (Plate 15, Erdman page 40), there to await suitably apocalyptic readers to open the pages and liberate the volatile content. The site is made possible by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the University of Rochester, the continuing support of the Library of Congress, and the cooperation of the international array of libraries and museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive, http:// www. blakearchive. org/