I wish i had read this back before it was published, when i was in a better mindspace to pick it up, as i know i would've loved it then. Unfortunately, this just wasn't for me

The premise of this book is that nobody is reading Paradise Lost and that this is a terrible shame but that luckily along comes John Carey with his helpful summary and commentary. But the thing is, I actually have read Paradise Lost. I was an English undergraduate back in the day. It isn't an easy read. In fact, I remember reading it aloud to my bilingual cousins because it helped me get some of the stresses and meaning clearer in my mind. They were both younger than me and rather nonplussed. But my point is that I am not really a believer in taking the easy route. So while this is a handy study primer perhaps, I feel a little sad that someone who actually teachers Paradise Lost believes it to be necessary.

Paradise Lost is a work I am repeatedly drawn back to for a re-read. It is effectively a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. But it is so much more than this, because it is a poem rich with description, action, intrigue, love and a vast sweep of emotions that owes its writing to ancient texts. It is a book that has without doubt itself influenced writers ever since it was published.
I have always sensed, in my ‘general reader’ appreciation of Paradise Lost, that Milton has taken The Bible’s version of the ‘fall of man’ and produced a far more nuanced and balanced narration of the tale. Satan and the other fallen angels have been cast out from Heaven and I have always felt, reading Milton’s version of events, they had a raw deal from an overbearing and unreasonably demanding patriarch. There is a delicate manoeuvring of Eve through insidious deception to make her take a bite of the forbidden fruit and encourage Adam to do so as well. Yet instead of using it as an argument for the punishment of woman for Eve’s transgressions, Paradise Lost, certainly to a modern audience, appears to lean towards a sympathetic approach to an individual who has been mercilessly manipulated.
So when a new edition was due to be published, which claimed to distil the poem into something a little more manageable, I was curious to see how it had been edited and whether it affected the quality of the poem for a reader like me who is not a Milton scholar, but merely a civilian reader with a great affection for the work.
In the wrong hands the power of the narrative might have been diminished to little more than a lightening tour of a story that needs to be savoured. Fortunately this version has the advantage of an editor bringing his academic viewpoint to the table in considering what to leave out and what to keep, but who is also able to appreciate that there are readers out there who just want to enjoy a great story, which they have previously avoided because it was just too much to take on.
John Carey has removed the tracts of narrative which for today’s audience would slow the overall pace of what should be an engaging and immersive read, because we are generally not as well versed in theological principles and the classics as a seventeenth-century readership.
The verses that are removed are explained in a concise way. The lines of verse are all numbered to tally with the original text, so if the reader then wants to read the two side-by-side (as I did), it is possible to compare and contrast the two.
I found that Carey’s potted version of the excised text actually helped me to get to grips with some very long winded monologues or descriptions, which had previously been difficult for me to unravel because I was spending too much time shifting backwards and forwards between footnotes (although this book has some very helpful footnotes.
The carefully edited poem retains all its power, foregrounding the magnificent descriptions of great battles and places and allowing the characterisations to shine through.
What editions like this do is give a reader who might feel overwhelmed by the full poem a way in by providing way points, which make it possible for them to navigate through the work appreciating the parts of it which really speak to them. After this they may feel more confident in approaching the full work. Certainly as I sat reading the full version and this edited version side by side I began to see things I had not seen before and consider them in a different way, which enriched the reading experience for me.

Like Carey, I, too, teach Paradise Lost to undergraduates (though for nowhere near as long as he has!) and yes, it can be a struggle to help them engage with the complications and complexities of Milton's epic narrative poem. Carey's response is to abridge Milton's 12 books down to something the length of Animal Farm.

He keeps parts of all books linked by his own summaries and commentaries. The problem with this is that Milton's great, rolling, digressive sentences can become broken up and fragmented as we switch between the poem and Carey's interventions. For example, in Book 2, we get 42 lines of Milton, Carey's summary which bridges about 100 lines, then another 6 lines of Milton before another bridging passage which covers about 40 lines, then we return to 10 lines of Milton...

It's hard, of course, but Carey's approach (and his introduction) seems to over-simplify Milton's poem. From my own experience, undergraduates don't need to be patronised or have their hands held to this extent, or their ambitions reduced or an indication that their tutors expect them not to get on with Milton (the solution in my department is to make students read 3 books of the poem in their entirety, with the hope that they'll be encouraged to read further on their own).

That said, this is a good 'version' either for A-level students taking their first steps into epic narrative poetry or for the general reader wanting a taster of Milton. I applaud Carey's attempt to get Milton back into general reading circulation (it's a wonderful poem!) but I'm not completely sure that this 'reader's digest' approach is the best way to do it. Well done, Faber, too, for an innovative publishing project.

Beautiful and more manageable than the original text.
Saying that I do think you lost something by not having all the details.
I would recommend to English students.