This page displays Michael Phillips’s reproductions, after William Blake’s originals, of two plates of Blake’s Europe a Prophecy as they were displayed in the Blake in the Heartland exhibit at Tiffin University, which ran March-April 2015. Blake’s Europe a Prophecy was one of Blake’s illuminated books produced during his residence in the Lambeth, Surrey area, now a part of Greater London, around 1794. It currently exists in fourteen copies, with one copy known from the historical record but currently unlocated.
Europe a Prophecy is the second of Blake’s Continental Prophecies, so designated because their subjects involve America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Written during the early period of Britain’s war with France, this work wrestles with the philosophic and political forces at work behind revolutionary France and the European wars sparked by the French Revolution.
Images of Blake’s originals below are taken from Wikimedia Commons. Each image of Blake’s original is followed by a reprint of the image after Blake’s original by Michael Phillips. View the William Blake Archive’s holdings of Europe a Prophecy, which also provides transcriptions of and annotations for each individual plate, or read David Erdman’s edition at the Blake Digital Text Project.
The images below are of the Frontispiece and Title Page side by side with Michael Phillips’s reproductions of these images after Blake’s originals. Click on the images to enlarge.
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The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 