Printing was authorized only when an imprimatur (Latin for "let it be printed") was granted by the Stationers' Company.
#Paradise lost by john milton license
Printers and publishers therefore required a license in order to legally print and distribute any book. The Licensing Act, which was suspended during Cromwell's term as lord protector, was renewed in 1662. This fair copy was corrected by at least five different hands under Milton's personal direction and became the printer's copy, used to set the type for the first edition of the book.
#Paradise lost by john milton professional
The only surviving manuscript of Paradise Lost is this 33-page fair copy, written in secretary script by a professional scribe, who probably transcribed patchwork pages of text Milton had dictated to several different amanuenses. According to contemporary accounts, when dictating, the poet "sat leaning backward obliquely in an easy chair, with his leg flung over the elbow of it" or "composed lying in bed in the morning." He revised as his text was read back to him, so that a day's work amounted to twenty lines of verse. He composed the poem mostly at night or in the early morning, committing his composition to memory until someone was available to write down his words. Blindness forced him to compose orally, rendering him entirely reliant upon amanuenses (casual copyists among his friends and family circle) to whom he gave dictation. By 1652 he had become completely blind, probably due to glaucoma. He had first planned the work as early as 1640, intending to write a tragedy titled Adam Unparadised. Milton composed the ten books of Paradise Lost between 16. For the next ten years, he was the chief propagandist for Oliver Cromwell's regime as lord protector and the lightning rod for European reaction to the execution of the king. Three years later, after the execution of Charles I, Milton was appointed secretary for foreign tongues (similar to the position of secretary of state) for the Commonwealth, England's republican government from 1649 to 1660. He published his first collection of poems in 1646. During the 1640s he wrote a series of pamphlets in defense of political, religious, and civil liberty, becoming the foremost polemicist of his day.
John Milton was born in London on 9 December 1608. Listen to NPR broadcast of Morgan Curator Declan Kiely discussing Paradise Lost » Listen to Mark Rylance reciting the invocation to the muse from Paradise Lost and Sonnet XXII.
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