Mei-Ying Sung. William Blake and the Art of Engraving (Book Review‪)‬

Mei-Ying Sung. William Blake and the Art of Engraving. London: Picketing and Chatto, 2009. Pp. x+220. 60 [pounds sterling]/$99.00. In William Blake and the Art of Engraving Mei-Ying Sung struggles mightily to stretch some new facts about Blake's less-studied engraving procedures into a book-length exploration of his graphic techniques in general, but the result will edify only those expert enough to extract the few grains of fresh information from a boatload of chaff. There's nothing seriously wrong with Sung's fundamental proposition, which is that recent scholars have been so obsessed with establishing and theorizing about (and wrangling about) the processes used to create Blake's most innovative graphic works, the illuminated books, that they have neglected some of the evidence that is available to elucidate how he worked in conventional graphic media. As a minor wrangler in these discussions, I have to say that I believe there are very good reasons why relief etching, color printing, and the other unique processes used in the illuminated books have attracted so much more attention, but Sung is tight that we should also carefully examine the plates and blocks that he used in conventional graphic processes. Even the linen clothes folded up are worth a good look, as long as we don't mistake them for the main attraction.