Chapter Background of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

Over the next two months a significantly reduced Parliament, after executing its king abolishing the House of Lords and the episcopacy, declared England a republic.

Paradise Lost

The composition of the poem was probably begun around 1657-8, and completed by the summer of 1665 when Milton gave the manuscript to his friend Thomas Ellwood to read. Milton’s contract with the printer Samuel Simmons is dated to 27^th April 1667. There were two editions of the poem in Milton’s lifetime, both printed by Simmons. It was first published in 1667 in ten books, the first edition (1,300 copies) being exhausted. In revised versions of 1668-9 Milton added the preface and prose ‘argument’. In the second edition of 1674 Milton divided books VII and X to make the poem twelve books, and the argument divided the prefix individual books.

Very little is known of the order, time and manner in which each of the different parts of the poem were composed. Early on in his adult life, Milton appears to have shown interest in composing an epic. Before visiting the Continent Milton declared his intentions to write an Arthurian epic. However on his return from Italy Milton composed a list of over a hundred biblical and historical subjects for dramas, and four on Adam and Eve. Trinity College Cambridge has these four drafts, perhaps written as early as the 1640s, of an outline for a tragedy on ‘Paradise Lost’. This is of interest, as these drafts present the final poem as we know it in certain respects as a tragedy.