Imagine a future in which the diverse fabric of humanity, with its multicolored threads, is shaped to create tightly woven tales of heroic galactic adventures and tragic post-apocalyptic dystopias. It can be found in Afrofuturism. With this description “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth century technoculture –and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future,” Mark Dery defined what would eventually become a burgeoning field of study and a social movement of African Diasporic artists, scholars, and activists, who set out to challenge the representation of black bodies by non-black writers, to explore blackness by dismantling prescriptive notions of black identity, and to project black narratives into a future space, a Black Space.
William Blake was born in London in 1757. Even from a young age he created works in multiple media, combining his interests in writing and drawing. He began work as an apprentice engraver at age 14, later attending the Royal Academy of Art. In 1782 Blake married Catherine Boucher, who would be an anchor for Blake ever afterwards and help him with his sales and printmaking. The same decade saw Blake’s deepening involvement with radical thinkers, the publication of his first book of poems, the opening of a print shop, and his first experiments with “illuminated printing” via relief etching. Blake would continue to develop and use this technique to combine text with imagery in the works for which he is now principally remembered.
Largely unrecognized in his own lifetime and always struggling to make ends meet, some of Blake’s works were based on commissions. But his passionate response to political, social, and religious constructs that he considered oppressive and misguided led to the formation of a personal mythology presented vividly in his illuminated books. Hand printed and colored, each copy is unique and exceptionally rare. It was only long after Blake’s death in 1827 that his reputation as a printmaker and artist began to grow along with his reputation as a writer, and the effort began to make his work more widely available through the production of facsimiles of the types seen in this exhibit.
This exhibit is a companion to a research website showcasing the works of author, artist, and printmaker William Blake to be released on the Schaffer Library website in late April, 2018. The development of the website would not have been possible without Union College’s extensive collection of print facsimiles of Blake’s illuminated books and commercial works. The presentation online of an enhanced catalog of this collection and the digitization of selected images, undertaken to inspire and promote student creativity, forever intertwines the digital with the print. Our goal is to use the advantages of digitization to create a greater awareness of the physical collection, draw researchers to it, and perpetuate conversations among students for years to come.
Digitized works are accessible from anywhere, which increases their exposure and also gives researchers additional functionality, such as the ability to enhance an image for more detail. Our website also allows for the archiving of student commentary on Blake, only some of which could be included in this physical exhibit. However, even in a digital world, print remains a vital resource with irreplaceable and tangible benefits. Prints of William Blake’s works are breathtaking in any form, but especially stimulating and vibrant on the page. Holding a reproduction of one of his books in your hands, flipping over each individual page, provides an intimate experience between the reader and the text and visuals that cannot be replicated by technology. It is also one step closer to the works that Blake actually produced, vividly demonstrating what the work would have looked like, how big it was, and the overall physical and visual impact that Blake intended.
Together, the website and the print collections allow students to explore and experience Blake@Union as fully as possible.
- Caitlin Williams, Curator '18
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851) was the child of the political philosopher William Godwin and the feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. She never knew her mother, who died within a month of her birth. Reared and given a wide, liberal education by Godwin, she began an affair with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814. A complicated romantic and peripatetic life ensued, but she and the poet married in late 1816 after the death of their first child and the suicide of his first wife. She had three more children with him, only one of whom survived to adulthood.
Her association with Shelley brought her into close contact with many more members of the Romantic literary circle, including Lord Byron. It was Byron who proposed the story-writing challenge during the summer of 1816 that provided the inspiration for Frankenstein. Percy Shelley provided encouragement for her writing, but he too died early, drowning in a storm at sea in 1822. After her husband’s death Mary Shelley oversaw several editions of his poetry, but her own literary output continued as well. Her other works include travel journals and novels in a variety of genres. Critics continue to debate the degree to which her later writings represent a distancing from, or a continued engagement with, the radical and Romantic-Era themes of her youth. She died at age 53 after a number of years of ill health.