John Milton

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Standard Name: Milton, John
Head-and-shoulders engraving of John Milton, 1670 or later. He wears bands at his neck, and shoulder-length hair.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Birth Anne Grant
As a girl she wished for a little sister whom she could teach to enjoy Milton .
Grant, Anne. Memoirs of an American Lady. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808, 2 vols.
2: 153
Cultural formation Ephelia
If this was Ephelia, she grew up in an extremely wealthy, noble family and an incomparably privileged environment, with King James I her honorary grandfather as well as her godfather, and with fine literature produced...
Cultural formation Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR came from the English middle class. She was an Anglican in religion. Mary Russell Mitford represents her as a young teacher taking a relaxed attitude to religious ideas in literary contexts (her students were...
Cultural formation Lucy Hutton
She was born into the English professional class: its upper ranks, if the motto on her published title-page is a family one. As befitting her marriage to a clergyman, she was a strong member of...
Dedications Hannah Cowley
One early performance drew bigger crowds than Drury Lane, although the rival theatre that night featured Sarah Siddons on stage and the king and queen in the audience. More Ways Than One was published on...
Education Tabitha Tenney
Whether or not TT 's education was Puritanical (most sources about her life have no higher status than gossip) she was well read in the emergent canon of English literature, from Shakespeare and Milton through...
Education Janet Hamilton
She attributed her power of language and ability for composition to reading the works of good authors,
Hamilton, Janet. Poems, Essays, and Sketches. James Maclehose, 1870.
viii
and modelling her style on theirs. She remembered reading the Bible and children's half-penny books before she...
Education Florence Dixie
Lady Florence was at first educated at home in Scotland. After a first, unsuccessful attempt to place her in a convent she had, in France, an Irish Catholic governess whom she calls Miss O'Leary...
Education Maria Riddell
The future MR was in all probability privately educated. At sixteen she wrote a poem to commemorate the pleasure of reading with a friend the works of Milton , Pope , Spenser , Shakespeare ...
Education Sheila Kaye-Smith
Sheila was educated at Hastings, at St Leonard's Ladies' College (almost next-door to her home), from 1896 to 1905. Like many large private schools of the time, this one educated its pupils to eighteen...
Education Jean Rhys
At a very young age, JR imagined that God was a book. She was so slow to read that her parents were concerned, but then suddenly found herself able to read even the longer words...
Education Anne Marsh
At probably four years old AM read Anna Letitia Barbauld 's Lessons for Children (a composite title for her various books for the very young). With her reader Anne Caldwell, Barbauld achieved her aim of...
Education Elizabeth Taylor
Her first school, where she went at the age of six, was a little private establishment called Leopold House, which gave a grounding in English and maths and team games.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Education Frances Reynolds
FR denied that she knew Latin, yet she used Latin tags in her letters. As an adult she worked persistently at self-education. Her commonplace-book contains her reading notes on Plato , Aristotle , Pliny ,...
Education Anne Grant
Of her childhood, AG wrote that she developed early powers of imagination and memory, but received little attention: no one fondled or caressed me . . . I did not till the sixth year of...

Timeline

8 November 1623: Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies,...

Writing climate item

8 November 1623

Shakespeare 's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, collected (with one or two omissions) and posthumously published this year in a handsome large-format edition (the First Folio) were registered with the Stationers' Company .
Dobson, Michael. “Whatever you do, buy”. London Review of Books, 15 Nov. 2001, pp. 8-10.
8-9
Kay, Dennis. Shakespeare: His Life, Work, and Era. William Morrow, 1992.
12
Lea, Richard. “Shakespeare’s First Folio fetches ¥2.8m”. Guardian Unlimited, 13 July 2006.
Smith, Emma. Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book. Oxford University Press, 2016.
2-3, 16, 56

Christmas Day 1629: John Milton finished his ode On the morning...

Writing climate item

Christmas Day 1629

John Milton finished his ode On the morning of Christ's Nativity. It was his first religious poem in English.
Campbell, Gordon, and John Milton. “Introduction and Notes”. The Complete Poems, edited by Bernard Arker Wright and Bernard Arker Wright, New Edition, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1980, p. xv - xxix, passim.
xi
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

29 September 1634: Milton's masque later known as Comus was...

Writing climate item

29 September 1634

Milton 's masque later known as Comus was performed at Ludlow Castle with music by Henry Lawes , to mark the installation of Lord Bridgewater as Lord President of Wales.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Milton

Late 1638: Milton's pastoral elegy Lycidas appeared...

Writing climate item

Late 1638

Milton 's pastoral elegy Lycidas appeared in a volume of Cambridge poems published in memory of Edward King , who had died by drowning.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Milton

By 31 May 1641: Milton entered (anonymously) the ideological...

National or international item

By 31 May 1641

Milton entered (anonymously) the ideological battle surrounding episcopacy (government of the Church of England by bishops) with the first of his five anti-prelatical pamphlets, Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Milton

1 August 1643: Milton published The Doctrine and Discipline...

Building item

1 August 1643

Milton published The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, a pamphlet arguing that divorce ought to be easier (for a husband).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Milton

23 November 1644: John Milton published Areopagitica, which...

Writing climate item

23 November 1644

John Milton published Areopagitica, which has become one of his most famous prose tracts because of its subject-matter: a condemnation of censorship, or (stretching its original position slightly) even a defence of freedom of...

2 January 1646: According to collector George Thomason, this...

Writing climate item

2 January 1646

According to collector George Thomason , this was the publication date of Poems of Mr. John Milton , both English and Latin. Compos'd at several times, which was dated 1645. It included the paired...

13 February 1649: Following the king's execution, Milton published...

Writing climate item

13 February 1649

Following the king 's execution, Milton published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, a pamphlet designed to enforce the general point that a tyrant may be lawfully got rid of.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
The pamphlet collector George Thomason

3 March 1660: Milton published The Readie and Easie Way...

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3 March 1660

Milton published The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, a pamphlet designed to sway public opinion against the restoration either of the monarchy or of rule by any single individual.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
The...

October 1667: John Milton published his epic poem Paradise...

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October 1667

John Milton published his epic poem Paradise Lost, which he had begun dictating before the Restoration and entered in the Stationers' Register in August.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
20 August 2009

May 1671: John Milton published, together, Paradise...

Writing climate item

May 1671

John Milton published, together, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes: a small-scale religious epic and a blank-verse tragedy.
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Poets. Editor Lonsdale, Roger, Clarendon Press, 2006, 4 vols.
1: 400n144

November 1681: John Dryden published his political satire...

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November 1681

John Dryden published his political satire Absalom and Achitophel, at Charles II 's personal suggestion, just a week before the first Earl of Shaftesbury 's trial for treason.
Sherburn, George, and Donald F. Bond. The Restoration and Eighteenth Century. 2nd ed., Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.
725-6

By late 1697: John Dryden published by subscription his...

Writing climate item

By late 1697

John Dryden published by subscription his verse translation of Virgil 's Works; it was the first time a literary work by a living author had been published by this means.
Watson, George, and Ian Roy Wilson, editors. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1969, 5 vols., http://U of A, HSS Ruth N Flr 1 Ref.

20 May 1707: Jacob Tonson the elder signed the first of...

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20 May 1707

Jacob Tonson the elder signed the first of two copyright agreements giving him sole right in Shakespeare 's plays.
Nichol, Donald W. “Warburton (Not!) on copyright: Clearing up the Misattribution of An Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Literary Property”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
19
, No. 2, 1996, pp. 171-82.
172
Bernard, Stephen. Whig Literary Culture and the Canon: the Legacy of the Tonsons. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Texts

Milton, John. Areopagitica. 1644.
Campbell, Gordon, and John Milton. “Introduction and Notes”. The Complete Poems, edited by Bernard Arker Wright and Bernard Arker Wright, New Edition, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1980, p. xv - xxix, passim.
Milton, John. Lament for Damon. Translator Waddell, Helen, Privately printed, 1943.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Peter Parker, Robert Boulter, and Matthias Walker, 1667.
Milton, John. “Paradise Lost (1667)”. University of Virginia Library: Electronic Text Center, Scolar Press.
Milton, John. Paradise Regain’d. John Starkey, 1671.
Milton, John. Poems. Editor Wright, Bernard Arker, J. M. Dent; E. P. Dutton, 1959.
Milton, John. Poems of Mr. John Milton. Humphrey Moseley, 1645.
Milton, John. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Printed by T. P. and M. S., 1643.