“Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books”

Appearing in tandem with the first publication of an authoritative text of the 1667 first edition of John Milton s Paradise Lost, these insightful essays by ten Miltonists establish the significant differences in the text, context, and effect of the first edition of Paradise Lost from those of the now-standard second edition of 1674. In bringing together essays by various hands, editors Lieb and Shawcross seek to map what may be termed a new frontier in Milton studies, that which acknowledges the importance of what Milton himself considered to be the work of a lifetime when he offered Paradise Lost to the world in 1667.
While the scholars writing here do not claim that the first edition of Milton s epic is to be viewed as supplanting the second and later editions, they do seek to demonstrate the importance of coming to terms with the original 10-book edition both as an epic with its own identity and value and as a work that provides fundamental insight into the nature of the editions that would follow in its wake. As these scholars demonstrate, Paradise Lost is a work that cannot be fully understood without an awareness of the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the forces through which it made its first and subsequent appearances in the world at large."