Biography of John Milton

For other people named John Milton, see John Milton (disambiguation).

John Milton
Portrait of John Milton in National Portrait Gallery, London ca. 1629. Unknown artist (detail)
Born	9 December 1608 (Old style) Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England
Died	8 November 1674 (aged 65) Bunhill, London, England
Resting place	St Giles-without-Cripplegate
Occupation	Poet, prose polemicist, civil servant
Language	English, Latin, French, German,Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish,Aramaic, Syriac
Nationality	English
Alma mater	Christ's College, University of Cambridge
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John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship) is among history's most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press.

William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author,"^[1] and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language,"^[2] though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind," though he (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".^[3]

Because of his republicanism, Milton has been the subject of centuries of British partisanship (a "nonconformist" biography by John Toland, a hostile account by Anthony à Wood