THE ENGLISH POEMS OF JOHN MILTON

John Milton (1608-74) 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 Il Penseroso ('the cheerful man and the thoughtful man'), Lycidas (his great elegy on a fellow poet) and Comus (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 defence of the Parliamentary party, then in defence of the execution of Charles I: these include his great defence of the freedom of the press, Areopagitica and later his two great epics, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and his retelling of the story of Samson as a Greek tragedy. This edition contains all his poems in English, with introduction and notes by Laurence Lerner. 486pp. Paperback