Arnold Fawcus

The original Trustees of the William Blake Trust were Sir Anthony Blunt, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, Lord Cunliffe, Peter F. Du Sautoy, George Goyder, Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Edward Croft-Murray, Kerrison Preston, Francis Wormald. The original U.S. Associate Trustees were F.B. Adams, Jr., Philip Hofer, Paul Mellon, Lessing Rosenwald, and Charles Ryskamp.

The Blake Trust was intimately involved with Arnold Fawcus's activities as printer and publisher and his death, soon followed by that of Geoffrey Keynes, brought to an end the primary phase of the Trust's history. For a time it seemed that there was not much more for the Trust to do in the way of publishing Blake material once the remaining, unfinished Trianon projects were completed. John Commander was asked by Sir Geoffrey if he would take this on, with the result that the collotype plates of 'Illustrations of the Book of Job' and 'The Complete Etchings of Samuel Palmer and the Illustrations of Virgil and Milton' were taken over from Mrs Fawcus, and assembled, edited and published by the Trust in 1987 and 1990 respectively.

Meanwhile, the Trust had been reconstituted and most of the remaining members of the old Trust had retired. The new Trust, under the Chairmanship of Stephen Keynes with David Bindman, Martin Butlin, Duncan Robinson and David Scrace as Trustees and Robert N. Essick, Morton D. Paley and Joseph Viscomi as Associates and John Commander as Executive Director, began to plan a 'Collected Edition of Blake's Illuminated Books'. This was published in five volumes by the Trust in conjunction with the Tate Gallery and Princeton University Press between 1991 and 1995. The paperback edition followed in 1998. All volumes are in print and are now published for the Trust world- wide by Princeton. A single volume 'Complete Edition of Blake's Illuminated Books', London and New York, 2000 (which contains all the plates of the 5-volume edition but without the editoral matter) is published by Thames and Hudson in Association with the Trust.

These publications are conventionally printed by offset and do not aspire to the fine printing/limited edition ethos of the Trianon books. They do however reproduce as accurately as possible fine copies of each of the Illuminated Books and have generally been acknowledged as excellent examples of best-standard current book production. The editorial content is regarded as definitive.

Having successfully completed these major projects the Trust is now again at something of a cross roads. New technology and the sophistication of current media (as exemplified by the William Blake Archive site at the University of Virginia) suggests that further publication of Blake material in conventional book form may have had its day. Nevertheless, the Trust can take some credit for having, through its publication programs over the last fifty years, contributed significantly to the world-wide awareness and understanding which Blake and his work now enjoys.

Text courtesy of John Commander, Executive Director of the Blake Trust, 2003