Paradise Lost Paperback - 1998

About this book

First line

This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject: man's disobedience and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed; then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent, who, revolting from God and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew into the great deep.

First Edition Identification

John Milton’s Paradise Lost was firstly published in 1667, divided into ten books. In the 1674 edition was reorganized into twelve books. 

The first edition of the poem was printed in London by S. Simmons. Simmons issued the first 1,200 copies of the edition over a few years, with varying title pages. By the time the 1,200 copies of the first run had sold out, seven different variations of the title page had been produced, bearing dates of 1667, 1668 and 1669. There is no known relationship between when a given copy of the text itself was printed, and the attached title page, making establishing priority difficult.

In 1668 Milton added a preliminary matter. These include “The Argument,” a description of the program of each of the books, and “The Verse”, where the author defends his use of blank verse. 

First editions were bound in leather, spine paneled with gilt lettering, and gold gilt-edged pages.