 The first volume – with forty-three engravings by Blake – was published in 1797, but it was a commercial failure and the expensive publishing venture was abandoned.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.