PARADISE LOST by John Milton. 2027.
Four hundred and twenty-six copies, printed once and never reprinted.
The right to buy is determined by the order of sign-up on this page.
Your place is fixed when you submit, and it does not move.
Recorded. Your place is held in the order received.
You will hear from us when there is work to show.
The Edition
Two issues,printed once.
A limited edition, published in 2027. No copies will be added to either issue, and it will not be reprinted.
Twenty-six copies. Each contains a unique original work by the artist, made for that copy and no other.
Twenty-six original drawings will exist. They will not be reproduced, exhibited as a set, or sold separately.
Four hundred copies. Each hand-signed by the artist.
Identical in binding and materials to the lettered issue.
Allocation
Copies are allocated in the order they are requested. There is no ballot, and no reserve held back for later.
The list is told the price before it is published, shown the plates as they are finished, and given the opening before it is announced anywhere else.
When all four hundred and twenty-six are spoken for, the edition is closed.
Specifications of the edition
- Binding
- Hand-bound, full leather
- Stamping
- Foil, by hand
- Enclosure
- Clamshell case
- Publication
- 2027
- Format
- Royal octavo (provisional)
- Paper
- Mould-made cotton rag, straight-cut edges (provisional)
- Printing
- Offset lithography (provisional)
- Type
- Digitally set (provisional)
- Price
- Told to the list first
Marked specifications are provisional until proofs are approved.
Long is the wayAnd hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light
The Art
Twelve plates.Twenty-six originals.
Twelve plates are being commissioned, one for each book of the poem. They will be made in ink on paper, by hand, over a year, by one artist.
The plates will be shown to the list as they are finished.
Recorded. Your place is held in the order received.
You will hear from us when there is work to show.
No light, but rather darkness visible
The Work
Twelve books.One disobedience.
Milton was blind, out of favour, and lately imprisoned when he began dictating the poem to whoever would take it down. He was paid five pounds for it, with five more promised once the first impression sold.
Ten books appeared in 1667. Seven years later he arranged them into twelve — ten thousand five hundred and sixty-five lines of unrhymed verse, which he defended to the reader as ancient liberty recovered.
It is the last poem in English to attempt everything at once: a cosmology, a politics, a theology, and an argument about the price of choosing.
The 1674 arrangement is the text set here.
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n
The Press
Tenet Press makes books as objects.
Each edition takes a work that has already outlived its century and gives it a new body: original art, type set with intention, materials chosen to last longer than we will.
Made by hand
No artificial intelligence touches the making of our books. Not a word of the text, not a mark of the art, not a line of the introduction. Our artists work in physical media. Nothing we publish contains AI-generated content, and nothing we publish derives from anything generated. This will never change.
Tenet Press is Seth Micarelli, in Great Falls, Montana.
The Notice
The list isthe edition.
There is no other way in. Copies are not sold through shops, not held on reserve, and not allocated by ballot.
The list is told the price before it is published, shown the plates as they are finished, and given the opening before it is announced anywhere else.
You will hear from us when there is work to show. Never otherwise.
Recorded. Your place is held in the order received.
You will hear from us when there is work to show.