'Paradise Lost was the first literary work in English written on a planetary scale... In sublimity and magnitude, it comes closer than anything in our language to the swollen red sun sinking in a tropical sea...' Guardian Satan is out for revenge. His rebellion has failed, he has been cast out from heaven and is doomed to spend eternity in hell. Somehow he must find a way to prove his power and wound his enemies. He fixes upon God's beloved new creations, Adam and Eve, as the vehicles of his vengeance. In this dramatic and influential epic, Milton tells the story of the serpent and the apple, the fall of man and the exile from paradise in stunningly vivid and powerful verse.