John Milton’s Paradise Lost was first published in 1667.
The first edition appeared in ten books and was issued after Milton had become blind, with the poem dictated to assistants. Its subject is the biblical Fall of Man, but Milton expands the brief scriptural account into a large-scale epic involving Heaven, Hell, Eden, Satan, Adam, and Eve.
A second edition appeared in 1674 and reorganized the poem into twelve books, bringing its structure closer to the twelve-book format associated with Virgil’s Aeneid. That later edition is why readers may encounter 1674 in bibliographic references and mistakenly treat it as the original publication date.
Milton began the poem during a period of intense political and religious conflict in England. He had served the Commonwealth government after the English Civil War, and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 changed his public circumstances. Paradise Lost became his most influential literary work and a major English epic.