Our Notes & References

First complete translation of Milton’s masterpiece into Georgian, a very good example of this fragile production.

Very rare: no copies listed in OCLC; but we traced two in Georgia (I. Grishashvili Library-Museum and Georgian Parliamentary National Library; the latter also references several holdings in Russia, including the Russian National Library and the Academy of Sciences (both in St. Petersburg) as well as the Russian State Library (Moscow), but currently none of these institutions’ catalogues show any matching results).

The translator, Vartan Avakov, notes in his brief preface that he had already completed translations of Milton’s Paradise Lost and its sequel, Paradise Regained. For the readers’ convenience, he chose to publish this prose translation of Paradise Lost first, with plans to release the next book soon after. However, we have been unable to locate any edition of Paradise Regained by Avakov, nor any other works attributed to him as an author or translator.

This edition, with charming decorative initials, was published by Avakov at his own expense. He likely kept the small print run stored in his home in Sighnaghi (Kakheti region, Georgia), with his address for orders provided on the lower wrapper.

Before Avakov’s edition, a small collection of different translations by A. Nikitin was published in Tbilisi in 1893 (68 pp.), which includes a work titled “Paradise Lost” – possibly an extract, or an entirely different work. Besides this work we have been unable to identify any earlier Georgian editions or a more complete translations of Milton’s work.