When the Restoration ended his career in British Commonwealth government in 1660, John Milton turned his full attention to the verse tragedy he had begun about 1640, then called ‘Adam Unparadised’. Now in his fifties, blind and ailing, Milton composed “Paradise Lost” aloud, in bed or (per witnesses) “reclining in an easy chair, with his leg slung over its elbow,” memorizing the couplets. learned transcribed into another’s hand.
Of the resulting 10,000-line manuscript he sent to the Stationers’ Company in London in 1665, only 798 remain. These 33 pages correspond to Book 1 of 10 in the first edition of 1667; a second edition, in 1674, would regroup the poem into 12 books. In the handwriting of a single, professional writer, the pages are almost certainly an honest copy: a final, corrected version composing the rough sketches that, in Milton’s case, would have borne the obvious markings of his various amanuenses, when they received his dictations .
This partial manuscript is the only known evidence of the creative process – necessarily collaborative – behind Milton’s magnum opus. Housed in the Morgan Library in New York City, the pages are presented in book form for the first time in PARADISE LOST (SP Books, $180), alongside paintings William Blake completed in the early 1800s to illustrate the epic poem.
The first page of the manuscript (above) contains the Stationers’ Company imprimatur, official instructions needed at the time to print and publish a book. Translated from the Latin by scholar Gordon Campbell, it reads: “Let it be printed. Thomas Tomkyns, one of the religious servants of the most reverent father and lord in Christ, Lord Gilbert, by divine providence Archbishop of Canterbury. Richard Royston. Entered by George Tokefield, clerk.’
Stationers’ – founded as the Worshipful Company of Stationers in 1403 – is one of the livery companies of the City of London, a guild of papermakers and publishers awarded a royal charter in the 16th century. It continues, albeit in an advisory role, to this day.
Below are the opening lines of the first book of “Paradise Lost”: “Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit / of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste / brought death into the world, and all our woe.”
Lauren Christensen is an editor at the Book Review.
