Is My Songs of Innocence and of Experience a First Edition?

The points of issue

• There is no "first edition" in the ordinary sense and no publisher: Blake relief-etched the copper plates by hand, printed them himself, and hand-finished each page in watercolour and other media, so every copy is physically unique and none can be identified by a printed point
• Songs of Innocence was first printed in 1789; in 1794 Blake combined it with Songs of Experience under the general title "Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul", the combined work running to 54 plates (Innocence alone comprises 31 etched plates)
• Copies are not collated but identified — each is assigned a letter (Copy A, B, C … Z, AA and so on) in Sir Geoffrey Keynes's census and G. E. Bentley Jr.'s Blake Books, and copies B, C and D are the earliest combined copies, formed in 1794 from Innocence sheets printed in 1789 plus the complete Experience of 1794
• Only some seventeen or eighteen copies of Innocence are estimated to have been produced, and Blake continued to issue the two sets separately after 1794; posthumous copies were pulled from Blake's plates after his death and are recorded separately in the census
• Attribution of any purported original therefore runs through the Blake Archive and Bentley's census, never through points of issue

How to confirm the first-printing statement

Publishers stated first printings differently by era. The decisive tells are a printed “First Edition/First Printing” statement, a number line whose lowest number is 1 (Random House ends at 2), or a dated first printing with no later printings listed. Paste your copyright page into the number-line decoder.

How to verify your copy, step by step

1. Find the copyright page — the verso (back) of the title page.
2. Confirm the first-edition statement — look for “First Edition,” “First Printing,” or the publisher’s equivalent wording.
3. Check for a number line or dated printing — the lowest number present is the printing; a dated first printing with no later printings listed is the tell.
4. Verify this is the UK true first — not a later-market or reprint edition.
5. Rule out a book-club edition — a blind-stamp on the rear board or a jacket with no printed price marks a book-club copy.
6. Photograph four things — the front cover, spine, title page, and copyright page — the standard record for identification.

The dust jacket

For a collectible first edition the dust jacket matters as much as the book. Confirm the jacket is present and unclipped — the printed price should still be at the corner of the flap (a clipped corner or a price-less flap can indicate a book-club issue). First-state jackets can differ from later ones in the cover art, blurbs, or review quotations; where a specific first-state jacket point is known for this title it is noted above.

Binding & format

Where multiple bindings exist, the hardcover trade issue is usually (but not always) the precedence copy — confirm against the points above. Later printings often show cheaper cloth, thinner boards, or simplified spine stamping. A simultaneous signed or limited issue, when one exists, is a distinct state from the trade first.

Is this the true first?

Blake's own illuminated printing (Innocence 1789; combined Songs 1794) is the true first, and London is the place, but the work has no trade publisher and no edition structure — precedence questions of the UK-vs-US or original-language kind do not arise. The donor- and collector-attainable forms are two, and both should be named. First, the first letterpress (typographic) edition: London: W. Pickering and W. Newbery, published 9 July 1839, slim octavo, 74 pp., edited with an eighteen-page preface by the Swedenborgian James John Garth Wilkinson, who worked from Charles Augustus Tulk's illuminated copy; issued in original blind-stamped plum cloth. It exists in two states, with and without the poem "The Little Vagabond" on leaf F4r (p. 71); most copies lack it, and scholars dispute priority — whether the leaf was inadvertently omitted or deliberately suppressed over the poem's attack on the Church — so neither state should be sold as "the" first. References: Keynes 53; Bentley, Blake Books, 171a. Second, the great colour facsimile: the William Blake Trust / Trianon Press edition (London, 1955), reproducing the Rosenwald copy (Copy Z) in the Library of Congress by collotype with hand-stencilled colour — as many as thirty stencils per plate, applied by the master printers Beaufumé and Duval — in an edition of 526 copies. It is a facsimile and must always be described as one, never as a Blake original.

Telling it from reprints & book-club editions

No book-club editions exist for the illuminated work. The documented tells are of a different kind: (1) posthumous impressions pulled from Blake's plates after 1827, recorded in the Keynes/Bentley census and not to be confused with lifetime copies; (2) the 1839 Pickering and Newbery letterpress edition, which reproduces none of Blake's artwork and whose arrangement departs radically from Blake's own — one analysis found roughly 93% of the ordering altered, with forty-one changes to the poems' enumeration; (3) the Trianon Press/Blake Trust facsimiles of 1954-55 and the Manchester Etching Workshop reproductions of 1983, all of which are explicitly identified in their colophons; and (4) modern trade reprints such as the Oxford/Keynes and Princeton Illuminated Books volumes. Any copy offered as an original illuminated Blake that is not matched to a lettered copy in the Blake Archive/Bentley census should be treated as a facsimile or reproduction.

Frequently asked questions

Is my copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience a first edition?

A first edition of Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake (etched, printed and hand-colored by the author, London) is identified by: There is no "first edition" in the ordinary sense and no publisher: Blake relief-etched the copper plates by hand, printed them himself, and hand-finished each page in watercolour and other media, so every copy is physically unique and none can be identified by a printed point.

How do I tell the first printing from a later one?

Check the copyright page. A stated first edition, a number line ending in 1, or a dated first printing with no later printings listed is the key. Blake's own illuminated printing (Innocence 1789; combined Songs 1794) is the true first, and London is the place, but the work has no trade publisher and no edition structure — precedence questions of the UK-vs-US or original-language kind do not arise.

Is the book-club edition the same as the first?

No book-club editions exist for the illuminated work. The documented tells are of a different kind: (1) posthumous impressions pulled from Blake's plates after 1827, recorded in the Keynes/Bentley census and not to be confused with lifetime copies; (2) the 1839 Pickering and Newbery letterpress edition, which reproduces none of Blake's artwork and whose arrangement departs radically from Blake's own — one analysis found roughly 93% of the ordering altered, with forty-one changes to the poems' en

I have a first edition of Songs of Innocence and of Experience — what should I do?

First, document the copy: photograph the copyright page (the number line and any edition statement) and the dust-jacket flap — an unclipped, priced jacket matters. Confirm the points of issue above against your copy, and use the free First Edition Checker to decode the printing. To sell, the author’s collecting guide covers the market. And if you are clearing books in the Albuquerque area, the New Mexico Literacy Project offers free pickup, any condition, and makes sure collectible copies are identified rather than discarded.

Glossary

First edition

Every copy printed from the first setting of type. Collectors usually want the first edition, first printing (the true first).

First printing / impression

A single press run from that setting. The first printing is the earliest and most desirable; later printings are still the first edition but not the true first.

Number line (printer's key)

A row of numbers on the copyright page (e.g. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1). The lowest number present is the printing — a line including 1 marks a first printing (Random House deliberately ends at 2).

Points of issue

Specific physical details — a stated edition, a number line, a typo, a jacket state — that identify the true first printing.

Book-club edition (BCE)

A reprint made for a book club. Tells include a blind-stamped dot or square on the rear board and a dust jacket with no printed price. Not the true first.

First thus

The first appearance of a particular version (first paperback, first illustrated, first U.S. printing) — a first of that kind, not the first edition of the work.