Greetings, new friends. Just entered this list in the wake of David Bircumshaw's post about the original print run of Paradise Lost. Here's another fact. Joseph Banks, as naturalist on Captain Cook's first Endeavour voyage (1768 - 71), dried his plant specimens between the pages of ex-proof copies of Paradise Lost. Interesting enough, but when you think that the paradise whose loss this led to was the nice tidy Linnaean classification system, which had to be wrenched apart at the seams to allow the new discoveries in, then I find it quite irresistible. Should like to get it into a poem, but haven't managed yet. Best Joanna