John Milton

From Amazon:
"John Milton was celebrated and denounced in his own time both as a poet and as a polemicist. Today he is remembered first and foremost for his poetry, but his great epic Paradise Lost was published very late in his life, in 1667, and in his own time most readers more readily recognized Milton as a writer of prose. This superbly annotated new book is an authoritative edition of Milton’s major prose works, including Of Education, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and the Divorce tracts, as well as the famous 1644 polemical tract opposing licensing and censorship, Areopagitica."

Regarded by many as the equal of Shakespeare in poetic imagination and expression, Milton was also a prolific writer of prose, applying his potent genius to major issues of domestic, religious and political liberty.  This superbly annotated new publication is the most authoritative single-volume anthology yet of Milton's major prose works.

• Uses Milton's original language, spelling and punctuation
• Freshly and extensively annotated
• Notes provide unrivalled contextual analysis as well as illuminating the wealth of Milton's allusions and references
• Will appeal to a general readership as well as to scholars across the humanities

In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time, populated by a memorable gallery of grotesques. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked, innocent Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his fifties - blind, bitterly disappointed by the Restoration and in danger of execution - Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intense debate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men', or exposes the cruelty of Christianity.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.