From his youth, Blake seems to have been obsessed with, if not death exactly, then the portal between life and death. In 2024, a previously untraced pen and wash drawing depicting a figure holding a walking stick, sporting a broad-rimmed hat, and entering a Gothic doorway came to light. This discovery appears to be the earliest known version of Blake’s Death’s Door motif, dating from the late 1770s or early 1780s. Blake’s creative practice involved re-using and developing ideas in different mediums, and variations of the Death’s Door motif can be seen throughout his work. This talk traces the development of the Death’s Door motif through Blake’s life, from his time in Westminster Abbey during his apprenticeship to the creation of his longest illuminated book.

Mark Crosby, FSA, is a Professor in the English Department at Kansas State University, USA. Mark is co-editor of Blake An Illustrated Quarterly, and co-authored with Robert N. Essick, Genesis: William Blake’s Last Illuminated Book (2012). He also co-edited Re-envisioning Blake (2012), William Blake’s Manuscripts: Praxis, Puzzles, and Palimpsests (2024), and William Hayley: A Biographer’s Influence on the Life Writing and Romantic Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century (2025). In 2024 Mark revealed the existence of Blake’s earliest engraving work (https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/media/engravings-discovery-william-blake) and is currently working on a catalogue of Blake’s apprenticeship drawings.