On Sun, 18 Feb 2001, Robin Hamilton wrote:
> From: David Latane <[log in to unmask]>
>
> > Everyone who cared about
> > poetry in 1667 knew that PL was the thing, and the sales were actually
> > good. The poem was reissued in 1668 and 1669.
>
> The 1668 issue was more a re-edition (turning ten books into twelve) than a
> reissue, but your point holds.
>
> Blake is another matter -- STC somewhere in the _Biographia Literaria_
> remarks that he's come on this totally brill pome called "The Tyger", but
> apparently didn't bother to walk down the street to meet the author.
>
> Blake appears incrementally in Palgrave -- One in 1, Five by 5 -- but the
> turning-point was probably the Yeats edition near the turn of the last
> century. Before that, nobaby cared.
Oddly enough, Palgrave should have done much better. His beloved maternal
Grandpa was one of Blake's patrons and he went off to Oxford in the 1840s
with an original WB or two. While more people knew Blake's engravings than
poetry, he was known not only by STC but also lamb, Crabb Robinson, etc.
The pre-raphs picked him up (Gilchrist bio--Swinburne critical book in the
1860s. But you're right that the Yeats-Ellis edition was the turning
point, though some people did care before then.
>
> Which is truly unusual -- Blake (along with The Blessed Emily) is one of the
> few Potes who +weren't+ (like Pope and Byron) Famous In Their Own Time.
>
True enough.
David L.
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