eBooks @ Adelaide

I’m pleased to be able to release a new ebook edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with wonderful engravings by Gustave Doré.

In 1663, being now totally blind and somewhat helpless, Milton asked his friend Dr. Paget to recommend a wife for him. The lady chosen was Elizabeth Minshull, aged 25, who appears to have given him domestic happiness in his last years. He was now free to devote his whole powers to the great work which he had so long contemplated. For some time he had been in doubt as to the subject, had considered the Arthurian legends, but had decided upon the Fall of Man. The result was Paradise Lost, which was begun in 1658, finished in 1664, and published in 1667.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books. A second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books. This ebook follows the second edition. The poem concerns the Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The story of Satan’s rebellion and his fall forms a substantial form of the work, and depicts Satan as an heroic figure in the Greek mould.

Satan is the first major character introduced in the poem. He is introduced to Hell after a failed rebellion to wrestle control of Heaven from God. Satan’s desire to rebel against his creator stems from his unwillingness to accept the fact he is a created being, and that he is not self-sufficient, which is rooted in his extreme Pride. One of the ways he tries to justify his rebellion against God is by claiming that he and the angels are self-created, declaring the angels “self-begot, self-raised”, thereby eliminating God’s authority over them as their creator.

Satan is narcissistic, self-pitying, and persuasive although his logic is almost always flawed, disingenuous, misguiding, or all three. Satan’s persuasive powers are first evident when he makes arguments to his angel-followers as to why they should try to overthrow God. He argues that they ought to have equal rights to God and that Heaven is an unfair monarchy.

All of which is, of course, Milton’s political view on the overthrow of Charles I by Cromwell.

This epic is generally considered one of the greatest works in the English language, and the fine engravings of Gustave Doré do justice to this great poem.

I added, over the weekend, several works by the early American feminist author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. First is her important essay The Yellow Wallpaper, which describes the effect on her of confiinement for several months to a single room, as a treatment for post-natal depresssion.

In addition, there are the first two novels in her Utopian “trilogy”, Moving the Mountain and Herland.

The first of these two has some problems: I used the text from archives.org, which is converted from a Google Books scan of a Harvard edition. Unfortunately, the text conversion was poor, but I think I have been able to correct the majority of the horrors. But worse, it seems that the Google scanners missed a couple of pages, namely pp.12-13. Should anyone reading this have access to a print copy, I would be grateful if you could supply the missing text. Or a scan.

For some reason, the Google Books edition is not available for viewing outside the US. Since the work is public domain in all parts of the world, I find this rather odd, if not offensive. Presumably something to do with the deal between Google and Harvard, and/or an intention to profit from the scanning at some point by selling access. Happily, archive.org has a copy.

The third book in the Utopian trilogy, With Her in Ourland, is nowhere to be found online, so we must wait until someone with a print copy is able to scan and convert.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner / Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

A new online edition of this classic poem, beautifully illustrated by Gustave Doré.