Desirable book: Paradise Lost: A Poem In Twelve Books by John Milton. Fourth edition. London: Printed by Miles Flesher for Richard Bently and Jacob Tonson, 1688. Hardcover bound in full calf, 9.25 x 14.75, 343 pages. This impressive, oversized edition of Milton's epic blank verse poem boasts twelve full-page engravings to open each book, plus a portrait of John Milton as the frontispiece, and list of subscribers in the rear. Book condition: G-/None, with both boards detached, losses to spine, and some foxing, dampstaining, and offsetting to the text; the textblock and engravings are good to very good.
This was a significant work for a variety of reasons: it was one of the first to be financed via subscription, and its remarkable full-page engravings, most drawn by John Baptist Medina and engraved by Michael Burghers, remain influential in interpretations of Milton's Paradise Lost to this day. In Five Centuries of Book Illustration, Edward Hodnett called the 1688 'Tonson Milton' the 'earliest serious effort to illustrate an important work of English poetry.'
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