Lot 166
Milton, John
Paradise Lost
Auction: 16 June 2026 from 10:00 BST
Description
A Poem in Ten Books. London: printed by S. Simmons, and to be sold by S. Thomson, H. Mortlack, M. Walker, and R. Boulter, 1668. 4to (18.2 x 13.3cm), contemporary sheep ruled in blind, [356] pp., A4 a4 ²A4 B-2T4, typographic ornament composed of repeating fleur-de-lys devices to title-page, criblé woodcut initials, type-ornament headpieces, binding rubbed, joints dry and superficially cracked, tear to foot of spine, trace of bookplate to front pastedown, minute worm-track to lower margins of sigs. 2D-2E, leaves 2Q2 and 2T2 with shallow chips to lower margins. Housed in a custom morocco pull-off case [ESTC R13407; Grolier, Wither to Prior, 602; Wing M2139]
Provenance
N. T. Orgill (ownership inscription dated 1807 to the title-page), apparently Naunton Thomas Orgill (1759-1837), rector of Brampton, Suffolk.
Footnote
First edition, second issue, with the title-page in fourth state: the first complete version of England's national epic, and one of the most important poems in any language, being the first to contain the additional seven preliminary leaves (A2-4 a4), in which are printed Milton's Argument for each book, his justification for his use of blank verse (‘The Verse’), and the list of errata; these leaves are occasionally found in copies with earlier states of the title-page (of which two are dated 1667, one 1668 but with a different imprint), but in such cases are are understood to have been ‘added by the original owners after their purchase of the text, or are present as later sophistications’ (ESTC). Leaf A2 is found in two states, with ‘The Printer to the Reader' in six lines (as in the present copy), or four, Grolier giving priority to the latter, though no priority is given by ESTC. An attractive copy, in a strictly contemporary binding, of 'one of the greatest works of the human imagination' ever printed (ODNB).