The Complaint, and The Consolation; or, Night Thoughts. by (BLAKE, William.) YOUNG, Edward - 1797

London: by R. Noble, for R. Edwards,, 1797. Quarto (424 x 327 mm, with deckle edges). Late 19th-century full green morocco by Ramage of London, signed, spine and sides gilt with borders of nested fillets, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, others uncut. 43 engravings by and after Blake, comprising 4 engraved part titles and 39 etched and engraved pictorial borders, printed on wove paper watermarked "J Whatman 1794"; but the title printed on laid paper watermarked with a fleur-de-lys. Joints unobtrusively repaired, without the leaf "Explanation of Engravings" as often, small loss in the margin of p. 13 reaching into the image, an early repair on the verso of the third title, light soiling and yellowing in some margins, occasional faint offsetting, a very good copy. First edition of Blake's designs for Young's Night Thoughts. "With his usual attention to what he called 'minute particulars' (Blake, 194), Blake carefully translated Young's words into pictures; but by using his own vocabulary of images, Blake created a visual commentary on the poem" (ODNB). Although Blake had produced 537 large watercolours to surround the printed text of the nine-part poem, the published text contains only the first four Nights, illustrated with 43 images. The publisher Richard Edwards, who ran the second Edwards of Halifax shop in Bond Street, closed his business shortly afterwards; no further instalments appeared. Blake repeated the format of these designs in his edition of the poems of Thomas Gray, and Young's themes and structure strongly influenced his own Vala or The Four Zoas. The sheets were printed twice, once for the text, a second time for the engravings. As Bentley notes, "the paper was only marginally larger than the copperplate, and even in untrimmed copies … parts of the platemark may not appear." In this copy, only the top edge is minimally trimmed for gilding. The present copy has the title printed on laid paper, an aspect not discussed by Bentley. The striking binding exhibits the stylistic influence of the Parisian binder Marcellin Lortic (1822-1892), in whose atelier the London binder John Ramage learned his craft before setting up his own business in London in 1863, which he continued at various locations into the 20th century. Provenance: the noted American book collector Herschel V. Jones (1861-1928), with his leather book label; the American bookseller Jacob Zeitlin (1902-1987), with his pencilled note dated 24 April 1934; Estelle Doheny (1875-1958), with her leather label, her sale, Christie's New York, 21-22 February 1989, lot 1707; Giancarlo Beltrame, his sale, part II, Christie's London, 30 November 2016, lot 281.