Calè, Luisa (2020) “A Dream of Thiralatha”: promiscuous book gatherings and the wanderings of Blake’s separate plates. Studies in Romanticism 59 (4), pp. 431-445. ISSN 0039-3762.
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Abstract
William Blake's 'A Dream of Thiralatha' is a 'separate plate' with a complex bibliographic history that questions and disorders the boundaries between books. One of the two copies of this plate was found at the end of a copy of Europe (1793), while the other was inserted in the middle of the Asia section of The Song of Los (1795). In the early twentieth century it was thought to be a cancelled plate of America (1793) and catalogued as part what has come to be called Blake's 'Large Book of Designs'. In this essay I explore the bookish trajectories and archival afterlives of 'A Dream of Thiralatha' and ask questions about the dissemination of 'separate plates', how they worked when inserted in specific books, when and why they were later disbound or arranged into alternative archival orders, and what this tells us about book parts and the metamorphoses of illustration under different divisions of knowledge.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Illustration: William Blake, "A Dream of Thiralatha", National Gallery of Art, Washington, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.8994 |
| Keyword(s) / Subject(s): | William Blake, Separate Plates, A Large Book of Designs, Europe a Prophecy, America a Prophecy, The Song of Los, Print Culture, History of the Book, Ozias Humphry, William Upcott, Lessing Rosenwald, British Museum, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art |
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Nineteenth-Century Studies, Centre for |
| Depositing User: | Luisa Cale |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Jan 2021 10:28 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2025 16:54 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/31273 |
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