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Milton's Paradise Lost
John Milton (illustrated by Gustave Doré)
This is a handsome modern reissue of John Milton's Paradise Lost paired with the tremendous engravings Gustave Doré made for the poem in 1866. Milton's seventeenth-century epic—blank verse of enormous grandeur telling of Satan's rebellion, the fall of humankind, and the loss of Eden—found in Doré its ideal visual interpreter two centuries later. The French illustrator's dark, sublime plates, all storm-lit chasms, plunging angels, and vast celestial spaces, gave Milton's cosmology an unforgettable pictorial form, and they have shaped how readers imagine the poem ever since. This Arcturus edition (2007) gathers text and images in an accessible volume, more affordable heirloom than scholarly edition. For readers who want to encounter one of the greatest poems in English alongside one of the most famous acts of book illustration, it's a rich pairing—Milton for the ear and mind, Doré for the eye.
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The author and the artist
John Milton (1608–1674) was the great Puritan poet of the English language, who dictated Paradise Lost while blind. Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the prolific French engraver whose illustrations for the Bible, Dante, Cervantes, and Milton defined nineteenth-century book illustration.
The book
Paradise Lost, first published in 1667, recounts in twelve books of blank verse the revolt of Satan and the fall of Adam and Eve. Doré's fifty engravings, made in 1866, have accompanied the poem in countless editions since; this Arcturus/Capella volume of 2007 is one such illustrated reissue.
How to read it
As poem and picture book at once. Milton rewards slow, spoken reading; Doré's plates offer a parallel drama, and part of the pleasure is watching image and text illuminate each other.
For more context
Read alongside Doré's illustrations for Dante's Inferno and a good annotated edition of Milton for the poem's dense allusions.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- John Milton (illustrated by Gustave Doré)
- Publisher
- Arcturus Publishing (Capella)
- Place of publication
- London
- Year
- 2007
- Edition
- This edition 2007
- ISBN
- 978-1-84193-251-4
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Maine