Milton John, Paradise Lost [Half-shell][1902].

Milton John, Paradise Lost, translated by Wladyslaw Bartkiewicz, Printed by Piotr Laskauer, Warsaw 1902, p. 424, dimensions 12.5 x 18 cm. Preserved publisher's cover. Elegant half-leather handmade at Suszek Books.

Paradise Lost - an epic poem in 12 books by English poet and writer John Milton, first published in 1667 in London, referred to the previous great European epics: the Iliad, the Odyssey, as well as the Aeneid. He considered the theme of his work to be more epic than the above, for the fall of the first men affects all of humanity.

The plot of Paradise Lost begins with the fall of Satan and his followers, which may suggest that Satan is the hero of the epic. Milton was also often referred to as an "unconscious Satanist" because of his detailed construction of the character of Lucifer. This concept was particularly alive among the English Romantics (it is Satan who is considered the progenitor of the so-called Bayronian hero).