This chapter begins with a synthesis of the current state of knowledge about the fate of those Blake plates about which some information was recorded. This is followed by an examination of all the surviving Blake plates, with an emphasis and detailed recording of those for Illustrations of the Book of Job.

Rather more ignored than his paintings, drawings and prints, the copper plates of Blake are rarely mentioned in current literature. An early comment after Blake's death shows an appreciation of the value of his copper plates. John Thomas Smith's memoir, A Book for a Rainy Day: or, Recollections of the events of The last sixty-six years (published posthumously in 1845), records under the year of 1784 his acquaintance with Blake. Smith's account notes that:

This rarely noticed remark by Blake's immediate contemporary draws our attention to Blake's use of his copper plates and their rarity even before Blake's death. Gilchrist's Life of William Blake (1863) tells that ‘the remaining stock of his [Blake's] works, [are] still considerable, she [Mrs. Blake] bequeathed [them] to Mr. Tatham… They have since been widely dispersed; some destroyed’. Frederick Tatham's manuscript Life of Blake (c. 1832) says that Mrs. Blake ‘bequeathed’ to him in 1831 ‘a very great number of Copper plates’. Unfortunately, almost all of these copper plates were, ‘it is believed, … stolen after Blake's death, and sold for old metal’.

Despite this general assumption about the demise of Blake's plates, Geoffrey Keynes has a chapter on the copper plates in his Blake Studies as well as further notes in Blake's Separate Plates. G. E. Bentley Jr. lists some, but does not give a complete list of the surviving plates in either Blake Records or in Blake Books.