“on Every one of these Books I wrote my Opinions”: Re-assessing Blake’s Marginalia

Blake’s manuscript notes in the margins of his books have been relatively less studied for their own sake and often used as padding for biographical purposes. Scholars like Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, and Peter Ackroyd co-opt and scaffold with the annotations to support their analyses of Blake’s personality, mentality, theories, and inspirations towards his works. The reliability of annotations in this regard, however, can be contested when removed from the fuller context of the work to which they respond and the annotator’s activity on the page. In this chapter, the focus is specifically on Blake’s copy of The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1798) and his added manuscript annotations in the margins.