Our  Annual General Meeting (AGM) of The Blake Society will take place on Wednesday 29th January at 7.30 PM, UK time. The meeting will be online, via Zoom. It will last about half an hour and be followed by a discussion about William Blake’s Notebook, or The Rossetti Manuscript.

The Rossetti Manuscript

After its recent publication in beautiful facsimile by SP Books, John Riordan and Tamsin Rosewell, two of The Blake Society’s trustees, and both illustrators, will be discussing the notebook of William Blake known as The Rossetti Manuscript.

This little book originally belonged to Blake’s beloved brother, Robert, and after his death William used it to compose and revise hundreds of poems (including many of the Songs of Experience and The Everlasting Gospel) and to sketch some of his most emblematic designs. After William’s death the book was kept by Catherine Blake, and then found its way into the hands of a young Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It contains fascinating drafts of Blake’s later published work, and also gives us a direct connection between the work of Blake and the group that emerged just twenty years later, calling itself The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.