Written by two of the world's leading Milton scholars, widely praised as "illuminating" ( Times Literary Supplement ), "seamlessly written ( Publishers Weekly ), and "a book of permanent value" ( Literary Review ), and winner of the Milton Society's James Holly Hanford Award, this magnificent biography sheds fresh new light on the writings, the thought, and the life of poet John Milton. A more human Milton appears in these pages, a Milton who is flawed, self-contradictory, self-serving, arrogant, passionate, ruthless, ambitious, and cunning. He is also among the most accomplished writers of the period, the most eloquent polemicist of the mid-century, and the author of the finest and most influential narrative poem in English, Paradise Lost, which the book examines in detail. What Milton achieved in the face of crippling adversity, blindness, bereavement, and political eclipse, remains wondrous. Here is a fascinating biography of this towering literary figure—the first new serious study in forty years—one that profoundly challenges the received wisdom about one of England's leading poets and thinkers.