LEWIS, C.S., A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford University Press), 1942

8vo; pp. [viii], 139, [1].

A very good copy of the first edition in a good dust-jacket; the book itself is near-fine, noting only a pencil inscription to the front free endpaper; jacket nicked and worn to the edges with some surface scuffing, and slight loss to the top of the spine.

The book that “set the course for Milton Studies for the second half of the twentieth century” (Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost, p. 204).

A Preface to Paradise Lost began as Lewis' 1941 Ballard Matthews Lectures, at the University College of North Wales, and takes aim at Denis Saurat's work Milton: Man and Thinker.

Lewis excludes Milton's personality and private thought from his analysis and gives a ‘universal’ Christian reading of Paradise Lost, now considered to be the most rigorous ‘orthodox’ reading of the poem.

The influence of Lewis’ work has been extensive, shaping the notion both of Milton as an Augustinian theologian, while also inspiring Stanley Fish's radical Surprised by Sin.

An excellent copy of this scarce wartime production.