Description
Book SynopsisParadise Lost, possibly the 'most read, most criticized, and most exalted' poem in the English language, has been published more often perhaps in the three hundred years of its existence than any other work of English literature. In the eighteenth century alone, when the English nation went Milton mad, more than a hundred editions were made available to the English reading public.
This study traces the transmission history of the poem from its first appearance in 1667, through the eighteenth century with its emphasis on conjectural criticism, to the present century when it was subjected to unwarranted 'restoration.' For the editor of Paradise Lost, who must seek the know 'everything there is to know' about the authoritative texts, that history is a complex one; it includes a first edition with internal variants in five distinct issues, a revised second edition redevised into twelve books, with more than a thousand variants between the two, and subsequent edi
