John Milton

English · 1608–1674

English poet and intellectual, best known for the epic Paradise Lost (1667), which retells the Fall of Man and the rebellion of Satan against God. A staunch Puritan and republican who served Cromwell's government as Latin Secretary, Milton went blind in middle age and dictated Paradise Lost to scribes. His sympathetic-seeming portrayal of Lucifer made the poem a touchstone for the Romantics — Shelley, Byron, and Mary Shelley among them — who read it as a parable about rebellion against tyrannical authority.

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