On This Day April 27

John Milton published Paradise Lost, written in 12 books in 1667. Blind and impoverished, he sold his copyright for Paradise Lost on April 27, 1667 to Samuel Simmons, a London Bookseller, for a paltry £5, plus another £5 after three additions of 1500 copies had been sold. Paradise Lost was the first great poem written in blank verse. Milton wrote in the preface: "The troublesome and modern bondage of Rhyming."

Title page of Paradise Lost, London: 1667, by John Milton 

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