Books

Birmingham: Printed by John Baskerville for J. and R. Tonson in London, 1758. One of 1,500 copies. 230 x 145 mm. (9 x 5 5/8"). With subscribers' list in first volume. Two volumes. Edited by Thomas Newton. EXCEPTIONALLY PRETTY OLIVE GREEN STRAIGHT GRAIN MOROCCO, HANDSOMELY GILT, for Sotheran ("H. Sotheran & Co." printed in gilt on front turn-in), covers panelled with multiple straight and stippled borders, scrolling floral cornerpieces, six mounds of massed tools on the inner side of the central frame (two on each side, and one at head and foot), raised bands, spine compartments elaborately gilt in antique style with scrolled foliate cornerpieces between double ruled borders and centerpiece star of small tools, very ornate inner dentelles, all edges gilt. Gaskell 4, 5; Brunet III, 1730; Graesse IV, 529. ◆Backstrips faded to an attractive brown (as usual with green morocco), otherwise only very trivial imperfections: AN EXTREMELY FINE COPY, VIRTUALLY IMMACULATE INTERNALLY, AND IN…

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse.