THE ENGLISH POEMS OF JOHN MILTON
By John Milton
John Milton (1608-74)
He has a strong claim to be considered the greatest English poet after Shakespeare. His early poems collected and published in 1645 include the much loved pair: L’Allegro and I Penseroso – the cheerful man and the thoughtful man, Lycidas – his great clergy on a fellow poet and Camus – the one masque which is still read today. When the civil war began Milton abandoned poetry for politics and wrote a series of pamphlets in defense of the parliamentary party, then in defense of the execution of execution of Charles I: these include his great defense of the freedom of the press, Areopagitica and later his two great epics, Paradise lost and Paradise regained, and his retelling the story of Samson as a Greek tragedy. This edition contains all his poems in English with introduction and notes by Laurence and Lerner.
