and other

in the West and East of Cornwall

by

JOHN THOMAS BLIGHT, f.s.a.

A reprint of his 1856 and 1858 editions

with an Introduction by Ian McNeil Cooke

In 1856 John Thomas Blight, the Penzance antiquarian and, arguably, the most prolific artist of local antiquities, published his first major work at the age of 21—Ancient Crosses and other Antiquities in the West of Cornwall. This was followed two years later by a larger volume covering the east of the County; in 1861 his much admired popular description of travels to numerous remote corners of the Land’s End Peninsula was published as A Week at the Land’s End.

Blight’s immense output of work was almost entirely without financial reward, a factor that put an immense strain on his everyday existence: to augment the little monetary gain from his literary works he sometimes acted as a guide for visitors to local antiquities. Through mutual contacts in the Penzance Library (now the Morrab Library) he became acquainted with James Orchard Halliwell, the London based bibliophile and publisher; together they visited Wales and Stratford-on-Avon: Blight made numerous drawings during these journeys.

In 1866 he was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, but, only a year later, and only ten years from the start of his literary debut, his behaviour became increasingly irrational as an inability to realise his dreams led him into disaster.

 This single volume reprint of Blight’s  two works on crosses and antiquities of Cornwall, the first since 1872, contains some 200 illustrations of stone crosses, holy wells, ancient chapels and settlements, fonts, inscribed stones, cromlechs, stone circles and menhirs. It also includes an Introduction by Ian McNeil Cooke — author of Journey to the Stones and Mother and Sun, the Cornish Fogou — describing evolution of the cross as a symbol of both pagan cult and Christianity, as well as a short biography of Blight’s tragic life illustrated with some of his previously unpublished sketches of crosses since destroyed, moved, or simply vanished altogether. This new title of 278 pages is printed in black and white in A4 format; it is case bound in burgundy cloth with gold blocking on the front and spine.