Milton by Walter Alexander Raleigh probes the turbulent life and luminous art of John Milton, offering a vivid biography that marries literary sensitivity with historical insight. Raleigh traces Milton’s formation—from his Cambridge education and early lyric poems like Lycidas to the monumental Paradise Lost—and situates his work amid the convulsions of seventeenth‑century England: the Church’s strife, the Civil War, Cromwell’s republic, and the Restoration.
Part criticism, part cultural history, the book examines Milton’s prose tracts, his passionate advocacy for liberty and reform, and the personal temper that shaped his verse—melancholy, fierce egoism, and an unshakable conviction in human greatness. Raleigh also reflects on the art of literary criticism itself, showing how biography and textual analysis illuminate one another while acknowledging their limits. Readers encounter Milton’s classical and Renaissance influences, his rhetoric and logic, and the moral and political stakes woven through his poetry.
Ideal for fans of biography and literature, students of English poetry, and anyone intrigued by the intersection of politics and art, Raleigh’s Milton is a thoughtful guide to one of England’s towering writers.
