Paradise Lost

John Milton

2013

Paradise Lost. Miscellaneous Poems; Paradise Regain’d & Samson Agonistes. Illustrated by William Blake. 2 vols. Ltd edn 1450.

Full fair calf, hand dyed grey, yellow and orange with terracotta goatskin onlay. Top edge rough gilt. Hand sewn silk endbands. Grey leather doublures with terracotta goatskin inlays and gold tooling. Japanese kozo terracotta and grey endpapers. The design is based on a pair of photographs by Murray Fredericks of sunrise over Lake Eyre in Australia that I had seen in National Geographic. They cried out to be the covers of a pair of contrasting volumes. The colours were altered to reflect those within the book’s interior. The tooling sunburst on the doublures reference the William Blake illustration of God at the Creation in Paradise Lost.