John Milton was born on 9 December 1608 in Cheapside,
London. He published little until the appearance of Poems of Mr
John Milton, both English and Latin in 1646, when he was 37. By
this time he was deeply committed to a political vocation, and
became an articulate and increasingly indispensable spokesman for
the Independent cause. He wrote the crucial justifications for the
trial and execution of Charles I, and, as Secretary for Foreign
Tongues to the Council of State, was the voice of the English revolution
to the world at large. After the failure of the Commonwealth
he was briefly imprisoned; blind and in straitened circumstances
he returned to poetry, and in 1667 published a ten-book version
of Paradise Lost, his biblical epic written, as he put it, after 'long
choosing, and beginning late'. In 1671, Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes appeared, followed two years later by an expanded
edition of his shorter poems. The canon was completed in 1674, the
year of his death, with the appearance of the twelve-book Paradise
Lost, which became a classic almost immediately. His influence on
English poetry and criticism has been incalculable.
