Richard Edwards

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English publisher and London bookseller known for commissioning William Blake's 547 watercolour folio illustrations to Edward Young's Night Thoughts and for publishing the first part of the text with 43 engravings by Blake in 1797. This was the largest commission Blake ever received, but the project was a commercial failure and the expensive publishing venture was abandoned by Edwards. Edwards died on 10 October 1827 of chronic inflammation, aged 59. Because the principal evidence of Blake's work on these illustrations was the comparatively short series of engravings, art history has been slow to recognise the significance of the project within Blake's œuvre. In 1980, the Oxford University Press began publication of a projected five-volume scholarly edition of Blake's version of Night-Thoughts, edited by J. E. Grant et al.; two volumes have so far appeared and the fifth has apparently been abandoned. In 2005, the Folio Society published in two volumes a fine edition facsimile accompanied by a commentary by Robyn Hamlyn. The Folio Society facsimile was the first (and thus far only) time that all 537 of Blake's illustrations have been published together in full colour. Link to Night-Thoughts: Blake's illustrations of 1795–97