Where to Buy
Affiliate links coming soon. Purchases will help support this project.
Read / Listen Free
Paradise Lost
9.5John Milton
Milton's twelve-book epic of the Fall — the last great work in the Homeric tradition and the most ambitious poem ever written in English.
GBM Assessment (Score: 9.5/10)
John Milton's Paradise Lost is the greatest epic poem in the English language, retelling the biblical story of the Fall of Man with a grandeur and psychological complexity that transformed Satan into one of literature's most compelling figures. Milton's declared ambition to "justify the ways of God to men" produced a work of staggering intellectual and poetic power.
Milton composed Paradise Lost while blind during the Restoration, having served as a senior official under Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. William Blake's famous observation that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it" reflects the poem's striking achievement in making Satan a figure of tragic grandeur.
Revolution & Reason, c. 1651-1689
England beheads a king (1649). Hobbes writes Leviathan. Molière dominates the French stage under Louis XIV — Tartuffe is banned, Dom Juan scandalizes, The Misanthrope perfects comedy. Milton writes Paradise Lost blind and in disgrace. Pascal wages his wager with God. Spinoza constructs his Ethics. Louis XIV builds Versailles. England's Glorious Revolution produces Locke's blueprint for liberal democracy. Newton publishes his Principia (1687). The Scientific Revolution transforms understanding of nature.
Awards & Adaptations
Blake's reading. Core at Princeton/Oxford English.
Recommended Edition
First edition (1667; rev. 1674); M.Y. Hughes (1935)
