M. Walker under St Dunstans Church in Fleet Street, and R. Boulter at the Turks-Head in Bishopsgate-street, 1668." Yet another variation followed in the same year; for copies have been found with a sixth title-page, the same in wording as the last, but with a different typographical ornamentation. Finally, in 1669, we have copies with this seventh title-page, discharging all the previous booksellers, and naming a single new one: "Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books.The Author John Milton.London, Printed by S. Simmons, and are to be sold by T. Helder, at the Angel, in Little-Brittain, 1669;" which wording, but with slight differences in the typography, is repeated in two other issues of copies in the same year. In short, no fewer than nine distinct forms of title-page have been found in copies of Paradise Lost belonging indubitably to the first edition; and it is possible that these may not be all.[1]
Studying these particulars, one construes the story as follows:—Simmons had printed off at once, in 1667, the entire number of copies, certainly as many as 1,300, but probably the full 1,500, that were, by his contract with Milton, to constitute the first edition or "impression." For the first supply of the market he had bound a certain number of these copies with the first form of title-page, and sent them to the three booksellers there named, keeping the remaining bales of the unbound sheets in his own premises. When he next binds a set of copies, still in 1667, for a second supply, his taste leads him to set up a new title-page for them, with the author's name in a different type. But this matter of the author's name becomes suddenly of some special importance. The sale at the three booksellers' shops seems to be slow: can it be because the undisguised appearance of the author's unpopular name in full in front of the book repels certain classes of people that might otherwise be purchasers? To catch such weak-minded customers, Simmons, probably after consultation with Milton, issues twice in 1668
- ↑ See Bohn's Lowndes, Art. "Milton;" also Leigh Sotheby's Ramblings in Elucidation of Milton, pp. 81-82; also Introduction to Paradise Lost in Cambridge Edition of Milton's Poetical Works, pp. 8-9.
