1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:02,000
Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

2
00:00:02,080 --> 00:00:08,600
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,

3
00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:11,319
Speaker 1: the show that flips through the pages of history to

4
00:00:11,440 --> 00:00:15,560
Speaker 1: deliver old news in a new way. I'm Gay Bluesier

5
00:00:15,760 --> 00:00:18,119
Speaker 1: and in this episode, we're looking at one of the

6
00:00:18,160 --> 00:00:22,079
Speaker 1: best bargains in literary history, the day when the publishing

7
00:00:22,160 --> 00:00:25,000
Speaker 1: rights to a seminal work were sold for a mere

8
00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:39,000
Speaker 1: ten pounds. The day was April sixteen sixty seven. English

9
00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:42,400
Speaker 1: poet John Milton entered into an agreement to publish his

10
00:00:42,479 --> 00:00:47,040
Speaker 1: epic poem Paradise Lost. The contract was made with a

11
00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:51,680
Speaker 1: printer named Samuel Simmons. He paid Milton five pounds for

12
00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:55,040
Speaker 1: the manuscript and the copyright, with a further five pounds

13
00:00:55,080 --> 00:00:58,960
Speaker 1: to be paid once copies of the poem had been sold.

14
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:03,640
Speaker 1: In the mid seventeenth century, ten pounds had the purchasing

15
00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:08,040
Speaker 1: power of about sixteen hundred pounds or roughly two thousand

16
00:01:08,120 --> 00:01:12,880
Speaker 1: dollars today. It wasn't the greatest deal for Milton, especially

17
00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:16,039
Speaker 1: when you consider how popular his work became, but as

18
00:01:16,080 --> 00:01:20,640
Speaker 1: an impoverished poet, he didn't have much choice. Within a

19
00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:24,480
Speaker 1: few decades of its publication, Paradise Lost would be heralded

20
00:01:24,480 --> 00:01:27,679
Speaker 1: as a masterpiece, and John Milton would become the most

21
00:01:27,760 --> 00:01:33,800
Speaker 1: respected English author since William Shakespeare. Unfortunately, as often happens,

22
00:01:34,120 --> 00:01:37,759
Speaker 1: the author didn't live long enough to enjoy that success himself.

23
00:01:38,800 --> 00:01:42,080
Speaker 1: If you've never read it before, Paradise Lost is an

24
00:01:42,080 --> 00:01:46,360
Speaker 1: epic poem split into ten books or segments, and consisting

25
00:01:46,400 --> 00:01:50,640
Speaker 1: of more than ten thousand lines. The sprawling poem as

26
00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:54,520
Speaker 1: a regular meter iambic pentameter and is an example of

27
00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:59,240
Speaker 1: blank verse, meaning that the lines are unrhymed. The main

28
00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:02,280
Speaker 1: subject of the poem is the biblical story of the

29
00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:05,760
Speaker 1: fall of man, the temptation of Adam and Eve, and

30
00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:09,799
Speaker 1: their subsequent expulsion from Paradise a k a. The Garden

31
00:02:09,840 --> 00:02:13,320
Speaker 1: of Eden, set to the very dawn of human history.

32
00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:16,840
Speaker 1: The poem also provides a dramatic account of the creation

33
00:02:16,919 --> 00:02:21,320
Speaker 1: of the universe and of a heavenly rebellion led by Lucifer,

34
00:02:21,639 --> 00:02:24,120
Speaker 1: the soon to be fallen angel who would later be

35
00:02:24,200 --> 00:02:29,240
Speaker 1: known as Satan. Milton's unorthodox portrayal of Lucifer is one

36
00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:32,880
Speaker 1: of the most memorable and compelling aspects of the poem,

37
00:02:32,919 --> 00:02:36,679
Speaker 1: serving almost as a protagonist for the story. Lucifer is

38
00:02:36,760 --> 00:02:42,560
Speaker 1: depicted as a sympathetic, tragic figure, charismatic, persuasive, and ultimately

39
00:02:42,680 --> 00:02:46,280
Speaker 1: doomed to fail. In one of the book's most famous lines,

40
00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:50,280
Speaker 1: the Fallen Angel declares that it's quote better to reign

41
00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:54,840
Speaker 1: in hell than serve in heaven. It's a vain, stubborn

42
00:02:54,919 --> 00:02:58,400
Speaker 1: sentiment that many humans can relate to, for better or worse.

43
00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:02,440
Speaker 1: Nearly as an impressive as the poem's scope and content

44
00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:05,680
Speaker 1: is the way in which it was written. Milton had

45
00:03:05,720 --> 00:03:09,320
Speaker 1: gone completely blind in his early forties and began working

46
00:03:09,320 --> 00:03:14,000
Speaker 1: on Paradise Lost four years later, in sixty eight. He

47
00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:17,440
Speaker 1: reportedly composed the verses in his head both at night

48
00:03:17,639 --> 00:03:21,160
Speaker 1: and in the early morning, and then dictated them line

49
00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:24,840
Speaker 1: by line to an assistant who would dutifully copy them down.

50
00:03:25,639 --> 00:03:29,440
Speaker 1: This process went on for five years, with roughly forty

51
00:03:29,480 --> 00:03:33,959
Speaker 1: lines being transcribed each day. As you might expect, it

52
00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:37,880
Speaker 1: wasn't a perfect system. Sometimes Milton would wake up with

53
00:03:38,040 --> 00:03:40,720
Speaker 1: verses in his head but no one there to copy

54
00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:44,240
Speaker 1: them down for him. On mornings like that, or when

55
00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,080
Speaker 1: his aid was running late, Milton was said to mope

56
00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:51,080
Speaker 1: around his house complaining, quote, I want to be milked.

57
00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:54,840
Speaker 1: I want to be milked. Writing the poem was clearly

58
00:03:54,880 --> 00:03:58,080
Speaker 1: a great feat on Milton's part, but let's also give

59
00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:01,240
Speaker 1: some credit to that long suffering assistant, the one who

60
00:04:01,240 --> 00:04:05,560
Speaker 1: had to do all that milking. When Paradise Lost was

61
00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:09,600
Speaker 1: finally finished, John Milton sold the manuscript and the publishing

62
00:04:09,680 --> 00:04:13,880
Speaker 1: rights to Samuel Simmons at a relatively low price. Due

63
00:04:13,880 --> 00:04:17,320
Speaker 1: to his blindness, Milton had an assistant signed the document

64
00:04:17,400 --> 00:04:20,880
Speaker 1: on his behalf, and it's actually the earliest known example

65
00:04:20,960 --> 00:04:24,080
Speaker 1: of a contract between an English author and a publisher.

66
00:04:24,760 --> 00:04:28,560
Speaker 1: Today that original contract is held in the British Library,

67
00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:33,159
Speaker 1: where it's frequently displayed alongside a first edition of Paradise Lost.

68
00:04:34,080 --> 00:04:37,960
Speaker 1: According to the contract, Milton was entitled to an additional

69
00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:42,520
Speaker 1: ten pounds once two further editions of copies each had

70
00:04:42,560 --> 00:04:46,039
Speaker 1: been sold. Sadly, the author never got the chance to

71
00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:48,960
Speaker 1: cash in on that deal, as he died in sixteen

72
00:04:49,040 --> 00:04:53,000
Speaker 1: seventy four, shortly after the book's second edition was published.

73
00:04:53,880 --> 00:04:57,120
Speaker 1: With Paradise Lost, John Milton left behind one of the

74
00:04:57,160 --> 00:05:01,080
Speaker 1: most revered works of the English language, but like Shakespeare

75
00:05:01,080 --> 00:05:04,800
Speaker 1: before him, he also made plenty of notable contributions to

76
00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:09,640
Speaker 1: the language itself. In Paradise Lost alone, the author coined

77
00:05:09,760 --> 00:05:16,279
Speaker 1: hundreds of new words and phrases, including un original, terrific, sensuous,

78
00:05:16,279 --> 00:05:20,599
Speaker 1: and pandemonium. The poem is also credited with the first

79
00:05:20,680 --> 00:05:24,359
Speaker 1: use of the word space in reference to outer space

80
00:05:24,680 --> 00:05:29,119
Speaker 1: or the cosmos. A lot has changed since Paradise Lost

81
00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:32,640
Speaker 1: was first published, and many of the classical and biblical

82
00:05:32,720 --> 00:05:37,280
Speaker 1: references it contains are less familiar than they once were. However,

83
00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:40,560
Speaker 1: there's still plenty there for modern readers to connect with.

84
00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:44,200
Speaker 1: At its heart, the poem is about coming to terms

85
00:05:44,200 --> 00:05:49,320
Speaker 1: with imperfection, claiming responsibility for our shortcomings, and finding ways

86
00:05:49,360 --> 00:05:53,039
Speaker 1: to move forward despite them. In that sense, even with

87
00:05:53,120 --> 00:05:56,640
Speaker 1: all the angels and demons, Paradise Lost is a deeply

88
00:05:56,800 --> 00:06:01,000
Speaker 1: human story that still resonates today. It's proven to be

89
00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:04,839
Speaker 1: an enduring addition to humanity's literary canon, and at just

90
00:06:05,080 --> 00:06:09,440
Speaker 1: ten pounds, it was a real steel as well. Thanks Milton,

91
00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:15,239
Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lousier and hopefully you now know a little

92
00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:19,279
Speaker 1: more about history today than he did yesterday. You can

93
00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:23,080
Speaker 1: learn even more about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook,

94
00:06:23,080 --> 00:06:27,600
Speaker 1: and Instagram at t d i HC Show, and if

95
00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:30,400
Speaker 1: you have any comments or suggestions, you can always send

96
00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:33,440
Speaker 1: them my way at this day at i heeart media

97
00:06:33,560 --> 00:06:36,839
Speaker 1: dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

98
00:06:37,120 --> 00:06:39,640
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

99
00:06:39,640 --> 00:06:42,960
Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another day in history class