Philip Pullman (b.1946) His Dark Materials: Northern Lights, 1995. The Subtle Knife, 1997. The Amber Spyglass, 2000.
At the end of The Amber Spyglass, the third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman illuminates his debt to Milton, and to Milton’s protégé, Blake:
"I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. My principle in researching for a novel is ‘Read like a butterfly, write like a bee’, and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar I found in the work of better writers. But there are three debts that need acknowledgment above all the rest. One is to the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist...The second is to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The third is to the works of William Blake."