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John Milton (1609-1674)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=724

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on John Milton including a BIOGRAPHY, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and additional links.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/milton/

This link connects you to the Luminarium web site containing John Milton's poetry, essays, a BIOGRAPHY of the poet's life, and additional links.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in London and educated at St. Paul's School, John Milton entered Christ's College of Cambridge University in 1625. Milton received a bachelor's degree in 1629 and a master's degree three years later. Publishing his essay "On Shakespeare" in the Second Folio of Shakespeare's works, Milton went on to read widely in his family homes at Hammersmith and Horton. In 1634 his play Comus was performed in honor of Thomas Egerton and it was published three years later. In 1637 Milton's mother died and he also lost his friend and fellow student at Christ's College, Edward King, who is the subject of Milton's great elegy "Lycidas," published the following year. During 1638, Milton traveled in France and throughout Italy, returning to London the following year. During the next three years, Milton sided with Parliament against Charles I's claim to monarchical power and published such essays as "Of Reformation" and "The Reason for Church Government." In 1642 Milton married Mary Powell, who then separated from the poet during the next three years owing to her family's sympathy for the Royalist cause. By 1645 Milton had emerged as a major poet with the publication of his Poems. Mary returned to him that year at the time of the Battle of Naseby which marked Charles I's decisive military defeat. In 1649, following the public execution of King Charles I, Milton was appointed to the diplomatic post of Secretary of Foreign Tongues. During the next two years, Milton wrote defenses of Charles's execution in works such as his 1651 Defensio pro populo Anglicano (a "defense of the English people"). The following year was marked by the death of Milton's first wife and the loss of his eyesight most likely due to glaucoma. Curtailing his diplomatic work, Milton undertook a Latin dictionary and Greek lexicon in the mid 1650s. In 1857 married Katharine Woodcock who died two years later. Following the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658, Milton went into hiding from the loyalist supporters of Charles II and was arrested and imprisoned in the fall of the following year. Defended by Andrew Marvell, however, Milton was fined and released at the time of the restoration of Charles II in 1660. During the 1660s, Milton worked on the composition of Paradise Lost, which was published as a ten-book volume in 1667, four years after Milton had married his third wife Elizabeth Minshully. In 1671, Milton published Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes followed by the expanded, twelve-book edition of Paradise Lost, published in 1674, the year Milton died.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Ackroyd, Peter. Milton in America. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996.

Bradford, Richard. The Complete Critical Guide to John Milton. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Danielson, Dennis Richard, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Milton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Dobranski, Stephen B. Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Fish, Stanley Eugene. How Milton Works. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Pruitt, Kristen, and Charles W. Durham, Eds. Living Texts: Intepreting Milton. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2000.

Silver, Victoria. Imperfect Sense: The Predicament of Milton's Irony. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Zunder, William, Ed. Paradise Lost: John Milton. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER