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Jonathan Cape has acquired What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost by Orlando Reade for publication in November 2024.
UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired in a four-way auction from Kat Aitken at United Agents. Astra House will publish in the US.
What In Me is Dark tells the story of the enduring, surprising and ever-evolving afterlife of Milton’s epic poem through a chain of stories about the scandalous life of its creator and the revolutionary lives that were influenced by it, including Malcolm X, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot and Hannah Arendt.
The publication will be accompanied by a Vintage Classics reissue of Paradise Lost, introduced by Orlando Reade, to mark the 350th anniversary of Milton’s death in November 2024.
Reade is a writer from London. He studied English at Cambridge and Princeton, where he received his PhD in 2020. Over a period of five years, he taught in New Jersey prisons, and the initial idea for this book was as a class on Paradise Lost that could be taught remotely in prisons during lockdown. He has written about culture and politics for publications including Frieze, the Guardian, and the White Review, where he served as a contributing editor. He is currently assistant professor of English at Northeastern University London. This is his first book.
On the acquisition the publisher said: “To say that we were captivated by Orlando Reade’s highly original take on Paradise Lost is an understatement. From the first line, we were drawn into Reade’s exploration of the many different, unexpected, often contradictory ways in which this epic has been read, interpreted, and appropriated through time and across the world, and to revolutionary ends. Truly, this is a book to delight both Milton aficionados and new recruits alike.”
Reade said: “I’m excited to work with the team at Jonathan Cape, who have published some of the writers of experimental non-fiction who have inspired me, from Hannah Arendt to Alison Bechdel. I’m grateful for the chance to tell the extraordinary story of how Milton’s epic came to have a vast and contradictory influence over the modern age. I’ve always loved well-written introductions to classic texts, so I’m thrilled to be introducing the Vintage Classics anniversary edition of Paradise Lost. I hope to convince readers that this poem still has the power to delight, instruct, and disturb.”