Blackwell Reference Online

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In the year he died, 1674, Milton could not have been at all be sure what would become of his poetry or if he would become famous as a poet. He was in disgrace as a regicide who had endorsed the killing of the reigning monarch Charles II's father, and he was in disrepute among respectable Christians as someone who wrote pamphlets defending what his opponents called “divorce at will.” Between the first edition of Paradise Lost in ten books in 1667 and its second edition in 12 books in 1674, Milton surely received personal compliments on his masterwork, but he could not be sure that its memory (and that of his other poetry and prose) would not quickly die because of his reputation as a king-killer and domestic troublemaker.Milton saw to it that Paradise Lost was well printed, despite his blindness, in an accurate, if simple and modest, quarto rendition of his text, absent of either the ornamental trappings or prestige of a “great book.” We have the manuscript of Book 1, now in the J. P. Morgan Library in New York City, and we can see in it the process of the printer's marking off sections for each day's composition. Because Milton was friendly with so many printers, stationers, and booksellers, and because he seems to have seen pamphlets like Areopagitica through the press, we can assume that, even though he had been blind for many years before the publication of his epic, he might ... log in or subscribe to read full text