WMR reviews Shepard's "Blake"

Review of R.H. Shepherd's "Poems of Blake."

Rossetti, William M. "The Poems of William Blake: comprising Songs of Innocence and of Experience, together with Poetical Sketches, and some Copyright Poems not in any other edition." Academy (September 5, 1874): 122. Web. 21 Sept. 2011.

Rossetti terms the collection "the least incomplete" of the Blake collections published by Pickering, but states that it is nonetheless incomplete.

Rossetti points out the inaccuracy in the editor's claims of "previously unpublished poems" which is made on the fly leaf. Rossetti points out where all of the verses save one have been previously published. Rossetti explains the vagueness of "unpublished" as that term relates to copyrighted material not appearing previously. Of that category Rossetti finds but two, and of "unedited autograph poems, he finds just one. He notes, too, that Shepherd has managed to include some material that was not in Blake biographer Gilchrist's "Life of Blake."

Rossetti impugns the editorial quality of the collection, stating that "accuracy of announcement"-here apparently lacking-"would be in the long run count as an editorial virtue." Nonetheless, Rossetti concludes with praise for the collection as yet another way for readers to encounter the "delightful and often exquisitely perfect poems" of Blake.

This review engendered further controversy, as Rossetti notes in a letter to Academy on October 10, 1874.