The Marriage of Silence and Sin
Cover Change . . .
Original Cover Illustration Information
Blake, William. Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy P, c. 1818 (Fitzwilliam Museum). Object 1 of 11(Bentley 1, Erdman i, Keynes i). William Blake: author, inventor, delineator, etcher, printer, colorist. Origination: Catherine Blake: printer. Publisher: William Blake. Place of Publication: London. Note: The place of publication is not given in the book, but Blake lived in London during the writing, etching, and printing of this copy. Date: 1793. Composition Date: 1793. Print Date: 1818. Location: Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, United Kingdom. Date: by bequest in 1950. Printed with the express permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, United Kingdom,2010-11. http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk.
The cover artwork is a William Blake plate entitled Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Copy P, c. 1818 (Fitzwilliam Museum). The picture is the cover plate for Blake’s poem bearing the same title. You may view other versions of the plate at The William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org). The archive characterizes Visions of Daughters of Albion as follows:
Blake, William. Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy P, c. 1818 (Fitzwilliam Museum). Object 1 of 11(Bentley 1, Erdman i, Keynes i). William Blake: author, inventor, delineator, etcher, printer, colorist. Origination: Catherine Blake: printer. Publisher: William Blake. Place of Publication: London. Note: The place of publication is not given in the book, but Blake lived in London during the writing, etching, and printing of this copy. Date: 1793. Composition Date: 1793. Print Date: 1818. Location: Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, United Kingdom. Date: by bequest in 1950. Printed with the express permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, United Kingdom,2010-11. http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk.
The cover artwork is a William Blake plate entitled Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Copy P, c. 1818 (Fitzwilliam Museum). The picture is the cover plate for Blake’s poem bearing the same title. You may view other versions of the plate at The William Blake Archive (blakearchive.org). The archive characterizes Visions of Daughters of Albion as follows:
Oothoon, the central figure in the poem, plucks the "flower" of female sexuality but is soon raped by Bromion. Her lover, Theotormon, responds with silence or useless abstractions. This slender plot is but a thread on which Blake hangs Oothoon's questionings of conventional morality. She insists on her inner purity and, in a long concluding lament to the "Daughters of Albion," on the varieties of energetic self-expression that cannot be delimited by materialist philosophies or legalistic codes. The characters and their words represent Blake's critique of colonialism, slavery, sexual repression, and attitudes towards women in his day (blakearchive.org).