Paradise Lost (First Edition) (The Norton Library)

Edited for the modern reader by Stephen B. Dobranski (author of The Cambridge Introduction to Milton), the Norton Library edition of Paradise Lost features the complete text of the second (1674) edition, the last published during Milton's lifetime. Extensive endnotes clarify obscure terms and references, and a thorough introduction discusses the epic's innovations and its historical and religious contexts, illuminating the author's radically ambitious undertaking to "justify the ways of God to men."