Category:Europe a Prophecy

Europe a Prophecy 

illuminated book by William Blake
Upload media
Wikipedia
Instance of	literary work
Part of	Continental prophecies
Author	William Blake
Language of work or name	English
Has part(s)	The Ancient of Days
Publication date	1794
Authority file  Q5412186 Reasonator Scholia Wikidocumentaries PetScan statistics WikiMap Locator tool KML file Search depicted

http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/work.xq?workid=europe&java=no

Europe a Prophecy[edit]

Currently Available:

1. Europe a Prophecy, copy B, 1794 (Glasgow University Library): electronic edition
2. Europe a Prophecy, copy D, 1794 (British Museum): electronic edition
3. Europe a Prophecy, copy E, 1794 (Library of Congress): electronic edition
4. Europe a Prophecy, copy G, 1794 (Morgan Library and Museum): electronic edition
5. Europe a Prophecy, copy A, 1795 (Yale Center for British Art): electronic edition
6. Europe a Prophecy, copy H, 1795 (Houghton Library): electronic edition
7. Europe a Prophecy, copy K, 1821 (Fitzwilliam Museum): electronic edition

Dates are the probable dates of printing.[edit]

The second of Blake's "Continental Prophecies" (see also America and The Song of Los), Europe presents in mythopoeic form the fundamental philosophical positions in conflict in Blake's revolutionary era. Historical events are reconfigured into their universalized representations through Blake's own cast of characters, including Enitharmon, the female personification of fallen nature and history, Orc, the spirit of revolt, and Los and Urizen, the "Eternals" who would become central to Blake's mythic system of the "Zoas." These contending forces lead beyond political revolution to an apocalypse of biblical scope. Only copies H and K contain pl. 3, a whimsical prefatory statement about the poem's origin.

Blake etched in relief, with considerable white-line work in some designs, and first printed the eighteen plates of Europe in 1794. The first printing of that year produced proof copies a-c. Copy a, lacking plates 3, 8, 12-16, and with plate 17 following plate 11, may be an early version of the book before the missing plates were etched. Copies b and c are not working proofs or copies but gatherings of early impressions (some, as in copy a, in early states). These groups lack the same seven plates absent from copy a and are from the same first printing. Some posthumous impressions were added to these groups by nineteenth-century owners. Copies B-G were also produced in 1794, perhaps shortly after the proof printing. There are only two later printings: 1795 (copies A and H) and 1821 (copy K). Copy A contains some opaque water colors probably added by someone other than Blake. Copies I, L, and M are posthumous.