BOOKS

Gutenberg Press
Frontispiece of Swinburne's William Blake, A Critical Essay
Image from Jerusalem
Plate 70

After the death of William Blake in 1827 accounts of his life and work began to appear in books. This list of published accounts of Blake came from the last book on the list which appeared in the early twentieth century.

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1828 John Thomas Smith, Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, published his Nollekins and his Times.

         Smith's acquaintance with Blake dates from his early days at the Mathews' to the close of the poet's life.

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1830 Allan Cunningham published his Lives of The Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, among which is a biography of Blake.

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1863 Alexander and Anne Gilchrist, Life of Blake, Pictor Ignotuts

         https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/may/29/classics.williamblake

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1868 Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Blake, A Critical Essay

         http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35995/35995-h/35995-h.htm#frontis

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1893 Edwin Ellis and W.B. Yeats' Memoir, prefixed to their large edition of the Works,    1893, is especially intended, as the editors state, to supply new facts, or to discuss in greater detail aspects of Blake's life which they consider unsatisfactorily dealt with by Gilchrist.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Facsimile_of_the_original_outlines_before_colouring_of_the_Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience/The_illustrations

1893 Edwin Ellis and W.B. Yeats, publication of their The Works of William Blake Poetic, Symbolic, and Critical.

https://archive.org/details/worksofwilliambl03blakuoft/page/n171/mode/2up

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1895 Alfred T. Storey, William Blake, his Life, Character and Genius 

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1905 John Sampson, The poetical works of William Blake 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_poetical_works_of_William_Blake;_a_new_and_verbatim_text_from_the_manuscript_engraved_and_letterpress_originals

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Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 15, (E 40) 
"In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals 
into the expanse.
   There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth
chamber,  and took the forms of books & were arranged in
libraries."

Book of Urizen, Plate 4, (E 72)
6. Here alone I in books formd of metals
Have written the secrets of wisdom                            
The secrets of dark contemplation
By fightings and conflicts dire,
With terrible monsters Sin-bred:
Which the bosoms of all inhabit;
Seven deadly Sins of the soul.                      

7. Lo! I unfold my darkness: and on
This rock, place with strong hand the Book
Of eternal brass, written in my solitude.

8. Laws of peace, of love, of unity:
Of pity, compassion, forgiveness.                                
Let each chuse one habitation:
His ancient infinite mansion:
One command, one joy, one desire,
One curse, one weight, one measure
One King, one God, one Law." 

Jerusalem, Plate 3, (E 145)
"Reader! of books! of heaven,
    And of that God from whom all books are given,
    Who in mysterious Sinais awful cave
    To Man the wond'rous art of writing gave,
    Again he speaks in thunder and in fire!                
    Thunder of Thought, & flames of fierce desire:
    Even from the depths of Hell his voice I hear,
    Within the unfathomd caverns of my Ear.
    Therefore I print; nor vain my types shall be:
    Heaven, Earth & Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony 

            Of the Measure, in which
              the following Poem is written"