The Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus." With Selections From His Poems and Other Writings. GILCHRIST, Alexander. ART & ARCHITECTURE,ENGLISH LITERATURE

FIRST EDITION. 2 Vols. Large 8vo. (24 x 16 cm). pp.xiv+[1]+398; vii+268. Publisher's original gilt-decorated brown cloth, the same decorations blind stamped to the lower boards, blue-coated endpapers, edges uncut. 48 plates. Numerous vignettes in the letter-press. Light shelfwear, insides clean. Inner rear hinge of Volume 2 cracked. An attractive copy. Gilchrist was Blake's first full-scale biographer and this work was first published in 1863. "Its effect was thunderous. Never has an important literary reputation been posthumously established so instantaneously and effectively" (Bentley). However it was unfinished when Gilchrist died. This is the first complete edition, finished by his wife Anne along with help from Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who wrote the final chapter from Gilchrist's notes), and his brother William Michael Rossetti. A.C. Swinburne also assisted; his own book on Blake was the fruit of his researches conducted while reviewing Gilchrist's book.