Sale 2683 - Lot 195
Additional Images
Blake, William (1757-1827), ed. E. J. Ellis & W. B. Yeats.
The Works of William Blake, Ellis Family Copy.
London: Bernard Quaritch, 1893.
First edition, limited issue deluxe large paper copy; three royal octavo volumes, half-titles in each; one of 150 unnumbered copies printed on paper; inscribed by Ellis's widow: "This is my husband + mine copy + give it with kind memory of my dear husband to you Dr. Volker," below another inscription in her hand, "to ourselves from William Blake," on front free flyleaf; illustrated with three frontispieces, two folding charts, and many other illustrations and lithographic facsimiles; bound in original publisher's half morocco, spines decorated in gilt, top edge gilt, others edges uncut, gatherings partially unopened (sporadic foxing, minor spots to edges; ); 10 x 6 3/8 in. (3)
Yeats' and Ellis's landmark biography of William Blake focuses heavily on his connection to the occult and spiritual world. The editors were deeply enthusiastic about Blake's writings, and for Ellis, who was a medium, the spiritual aspects were particularly important. According to bibliographer Wade, Yeats wrote in his own vellum copy: "The writing of this book is mainly Ellis's, the thinking is as much mine as his. The biography is by him. He re-wrote and trebled in size a biography of mine. The greater part of the 'symbolic system' is my writing; the rest of the book was written by Ellis working over short accounts of the books by me, except in the case of the 'literary period' the accounts of the minor poems, & the account of Blake's art theories which are all his own except in so far as we discussed everything together."
Keynes 150; Wade 218.
From the Ken Rapoport Collection.
