John Milton

Milton, John (1608–74), English poet. His blank-verse epic Paradise Lost (1667), detailing Lucifer's revolt against God and the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is one of the masterpieces of English literature. His major early works are the ode “On the Morning of Christ's Nativity” (1629), “L'Allegro” (1630), “Il Penseroso” (c. 1631), Comus (c. 1632), and “Lycidas” (1638). A supporter of the anti-monarchists during the English Civil War, he wrote many political pamphlets and a defense of freedom of the press, Areopagitica (1644). He retired after the Restoration (1660), and though totally blind, dictated his final great works: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained (1671), and Samson Agonistes (1671).