Blank greetings card with envelope featuring:

'John Milton and his two daughters' (Deborah Milton; Mary Milton; John Milton) NPG D38839

© National Portrait Gallery, London

by Benjamin Smith, published by John Boydell, published by Josiah Boydell, published by George Nicol, after George Romney

Milton famously lost his sight in 1651, before authoring his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). This depiction of the brooding poet dictating poetry to his daughters compounds the mythic association of blindness with inner vision and genius. Biographies of blind people in the nineteenth century frequently turned to Milton's poetry as evidence of the experience of blindness, frequently quoting his description of it as 'wisdom at one entrance quite shut out'.

Card size: 125mm x 175mm

Images are printed in their original proportions, within a white border.