"Paradise Lost: A Poem Written in Ten Books": Essays on the 1667 First Edition - Paperback

by Michael Lieb (Editor), John T. Shawcross (Editor)Appearing in tandem with the publication of an authoritative text of the first edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost, these insightful essays by ten Miltonists establish the significant differences between the text, context, and effect of the poem's first edition (1667) and those of the now-standard second edition. In bringing together essays by various hands, editors Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross seek to map what may be termed a new frontier in Milton studies, one that acknowledges the importance of what Milton himself considered to be the work of a lifetime when he offered Paradise Lost to readers in 1667.While the scholars writing here do not claim that the first edition of Milton's epic should be viewed as supplanting the second and later editions, they do seek to demonstrate the importance of coming to terms with the original ten-book edition both as a work with its own identity and value and as a source of fundamental insi