MILTON, John. Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. (And:) Paradise Regain‘d. A Poem in Four Books. To which is added Samson Agonistes: And Poems upon Several Occasions. From the Text of Thomas Newton. 2 vols. With engr. frontispiece portrait by J. Miller. 4 leaves, LXXII, 416 pp.; 390 pp. 4to. Later full straight-grained morocco in a panel design of three gilt boders and a wider blind-stamped border, gilt corner fleurons, spines in 6 compartments gilt, gilt outer and inner dentelles, edges gilt. With engr. heraldic exlibris. Birmingham, J. Baskerville for J. and R. Tonson in London, 1759.

Fine set of John Milton‘s (1608-1674) main works; second Baskerville printings of these popular text editions by Thomas Newton (1704-1782), bishop of Bristol. John Baskerville (1706-1775) was the leading type designer of the 18th century in England. His style influenced that of Didot family in France and that of Bodoni in Italy. Books printed by Baskerville are typically large, with wide margins, made with excellent paper and ink. Most of his types were purchased by Beaumarchais and were used in his 70-volume edition of Voltaire. The first volume contains a life of Milton and laudatory poems by Samuel Barrow and Andrew Marvel. The title-page of the second work is in its second state with the letters “PSON“ in the word Sampson erased and replaced by “SON“. Milton traveled in France and Italy in the late 1630s, meeting in Paris the jurist and theologian Hugo Grotius and the astronomer Galileo Galilei in Florence. There are references to Galileo’s telescope in “ “Paradise Lost“. This poem tells a biblical story of Adam and Eve, with God, and Lucifer. Its cosmic vision is not actually based on the Copernican system, but more in the traditional Christian cosmology of its day, where the Earth is in the center. - Some even browning, occasional small spots. - Gaskell 6 and 7.

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