[Rarebooks] fa: MILTON - PARADISE LOST - FIRST NEWTON EDITION - 1749

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th- & 18th-century titles, auctions  
ending Sunday, May 29. More details and images can be found at the URL  
below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

John Milton: Paradise Lost. A Poem, in Twelve Books. A New Edition,  
With Notes of various Authors, by Thomas Newton, D.D.. London: Printed  
for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper in the Strand, MDCCXLIX [1749].  
FIRST EDITION THUS. Two volumes, large 4tos (30 x 23.5 cm; 12 x 9.25  
in); vol. I: [18],lxvi,[5],16,[12],459,[1]p.; vol. II: 444, [116] p.;  
with subscribers list and index; two engraved frontispiece portraits  
by Vertue, twelve engraved plates by Grignion after Hayman; engraved  
armorial vignette and capital. ESTC T133934.

The first Thomas Newton edition of Milton's work, which remained the  
definitive text up until the 20th century. Handsomely produced, and  
complete with fourteen elegantly engraved plates, copious notes,  
Newton's "Life of Milton", congratulatory verses by Samuel Barrow and  
Andrew Marvell, a "Critique upon Paradise Lost" by Joseph Addison, an  
index, and the twelve-page List of Subscribers.

Bindings scuffed and worn, spines and spine labels dry and chipped,  
three boards detached, the fourth secured by the cords; vol. I  
frontispiece loose with some wear to the fore-edge; offsetting from  
the plates, scattered foxing/spotting, most noticeable on the  
frontispieces and titles, otherwise largely confined to the margins, a  
few occasional stains or traces of soiling. Front paste-downs with the  
bookplates of the Larchmont Yacht Club, the sea air accounting for the  
scattered foxing, no doubt ("presented by Mayhew Bronson," the  
"millionaire chief" of the Larchmont, N.Y., Volunteer Fire Department,  
according to a July, 1900 New York Times article). Also present are  
the later bookplates of Waldo Earle Sweet.