Who is the author of the epic poem 'Paradise Lost'?

John Milton is the author of the epic poem “Paradise Lost.”

Milton’s poem retells the biblical story of humanity’s fall through the temptation of Adam and Eve, their disobedience, and their expulsion from Eden. It is written in English blank verse—unrhymed iambic pentameter—rather than in rhyming couplets.

The first edition appeared in 1667 with ten books and more than 10,000 lines. Milton revised the work for a second edition in 1674, reorganizing it into twelve books in a structure influenced by Virgil’s Aeneid. The poem’s central figures include God, Satan, Adam, Eve, and the archangel Raphael.

Milton had become blind by 1652 and composed the poem through dictation to assistants, family members, and friends. Readers sometimes confuse him with Dante because both wrote major Christian epics, but Dante wrote the Italian Divine Comedy. Geoffrey Chaucer and John Bunyan were also important English writers, yet neither wrote Paradise Lost.