1880 Life of William Blake (2 Vols) Alexander Gilchrist : Decorative Cloth

Life of William Blake
With Selections from his Poems and Other Writings

By Alexander Gilchrist

Macmillan and Co, London. 1880. The preferred second edition of Gilchrist's delightfully illustrated biography of William Blake, and in the original publisher's decorative cloth binding. Large 8vo (9.5" by 7"). xxi, 2-431; 383pp. Volume I illustrated with fifty-six vignette, full page and mounted illustrations, with volume II illustrated with forty-one full plates and vignettes, including a number of prints from electrotypes made from the original copperplates of 'Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience', and Blake's Virgil woodcuts. Collated, complete and retaining the original half titles.

CONDITION
A fine copy. The publisher's cloth bindings are in exceptionally good condition with the gilt decoration remaining bright and clear. Bindings tight and square and the inner and outer hinges are secure with no cracking. Endpapers good. Bookplates to front pastedowns. Usual offsetting to half titles. All contents present and pages in good clean condition throughout. Overall a very good and handsome copy.

First published in 1863, this second edition is expanded, and is generally regarded as more desirable than the first edition, in part due to the binding.

Alexander Gilchrist was an English author, known chiefly as a biographer for William Etty and William Blake. The work is considered the standard reference work on Blake, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Michael Rossetti both offering contributions. Gilchrist spent many years compiling the material and interviewing Blake's surviving friends, although the work was originally left incomplete following Gilchrist's sudden death from Scarlet Fever in 1861. The work was first published two years later, having been complete by his wife Anne Gilchrist. In the publisher's original pictorial cloth binding, with extensive gilt detailing.

(Glass Cabinet)