MILTON, JOHN. 1608-1674.

Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. London: Miles Flesher for Jacob Tonson, 1688.

Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. London: Miles Flesher for Jacob Tonson, 1688.
Folio (373 x 235 mm). Portrait frontispiece and 12 full-page engraved plates by Burgess, list of subscribers at end. 20th century quarter calf antique and marbled boards. Light shelfwear, scattered foxing and browning.

THE FIRST FOLIO AND FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION. "The earliest serious effort to illustrate an important work of English poetry" (Hodnett, Five Centuries of Book Illustration, 1988, p 63). The illustrations were enormously influential in subsequent interpretations of Paradise Lost, eclipsed only in the nineteenth century by those of John Martin; the first plate of Satan and the fallen Angels is often regarded as one of the finest of all seventeenth century book illustrations. The work was also one of the earliest examples of financing publication through subscription, with a six-page printed subscribers list. Grolier Wither to Prior 607; Pforzheimer 720; Wing M2148.