John Milton

John Milton was born on 9 December 1608 in Cheapside, London, the son of a prosperous scrivener and composer, John Milton Sr.

Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge in 1625, taking his BA in 1629 and his MA in 1632.

Milton travelled through France and Italy in 1638-1639, meeting intellectuals including, by his own account, the astronomer Galileo Galilei in Florence.

In 1642 Milton married the seventeen-year-old Mary Powell, who left him within weeks but returned in 1645; the episode prompted his controversial divorce tracts.

Milton published Areopagitica in November 1644, a landmark defence of freedom of the press against parliamentary licensing of books.

In March 1649, following the execution of Charles I, Milton became the Commonwealth's Latin secretary, defending the new republic in official polemics.

By 1652 Milton had lost his sight entirely, probably from glaucoma, and thereafter composed his poetry by dictation.

After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Milton went into hiding and was briefly imprisoned for his republican writings before being released through influential friends.

Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, composed in blank verse while he was blind, was first published in 1667 and secured his reputation as one of the greatest English poets.

Milton died of kidney failure on 8 November 1674 and was buried at St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London.