John Milton 's life

John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, the son of a prosperous Puritan family. His father, a musician, encouraged him to pursue an excellent education, hiring private tutors and enroling him in St. Paul's school (c. 1620).

John Milton

The first stage of Milton's literary career began in 1625, when he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, where he studied until 1632. He seems not to have been very popular with his fellow students or his professors, and on one occasion he was "sent down" for a fight with a tutor, but was allowed to return. Milton seems to have spent the years between 1632 (when he completed his Master's degree) and 1637 in private study at his father's country home near Windsor. Following this, he travelled in France and Italy (1638-1639), and many of the descriptions in Paradise Lost (such as the description of Hell) reflect things which he saw on these travels. Poems from this period include "Prolusions," "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629), "Comus" (1634), and "Lycidas" (1639), a poem based on the death of a fellow student, Edward King.

The second stage of Milton's career began in 1640, when he returned to England to teach his nephews. This stage of Milton's life was marked by controversy and civil unrest in England. In 1642 civil war broke out between the Puritan Roundheads and the Royalist supporters of Charles I. Milton was involved in many of the religious and political controversies of his day, and many of his prose works (both in English and Latin) date from the years between 1641 and 1660. His devotion to the principles of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth (as well as many of the themes and motifs which would later dominate Paradise Lost) are evident in the many pamphlets he penned during this period.

In 1642 Milton married Mary Powell, but the marriage was a failure and she seems to have left him within months of the wedding, not to return until 1645. His two daughters, Anne and Mary, were born after their reconciliation.

In 1649 Charles I was executed and Cromwell's Commonwealth seemed secure. In March of that year, Milton was appointed Secretary in Foreign Tongues to the Council of State (a kind of foreign-affairs minister). Charles I's death was highly controversial both in England and Europe, and in October Milton published Eikonoklastes, in which he defended Cromwell's actions. In 1651, responding to further European criticism of Cromwell's regime, he published his first Defensio pro populo Anglicano (The Defence of the People of England) . The year 1651 also saw the birth of his only son, John.

The following year was one of tragedy for Milton. Within days of the birth of his third daughter, Deborah, his wife died, and a month later his son John also died. To compound the tragedy, his eyesight, weak since 1644, failed completely and he became totally blind. One can only imagine how devastating this must have been for a poet whose work is as dominated by vivid visual imagery as is Milton's.

In 1656, Milton married his second wife, Kathenne Woodcock, who died less than two years later. Over the next few years, Milton published a number of tracts which reflect his deep concern for church government and the abuses therein.

Following the Restoration in 1660, Milton was placed for a time under house arrest, but was released within six months. This begins the third and final stage of Milton's literary career. Retired from public life, in 1663 he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshul, and in 1667, he published the first edition of Paradise Lost's ten books. Although much of the material subsequent to the fall is missing from this edition, the concern to "justify the ways of God to man" is evident, as is Milton's conviction that, despite the fall of the Commonwealth and the Restoration of the monarchy, political justice can be achieved in this world. Between 1670 and 1673 he published several of his greatest works, including Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Only months before his death, he published Paradise Lost, A Poem in Twelve Books, the complete edition of his epic. He died on November 8, 1674, and was buried in St. Giles, Cripplegate, London.