Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the James Holly Hanford Award, Milton Society of America"
"Laudably cool-headed. . . . McDowell manages to shine new light even on some of the best-trodden territory. . . . [A] tour de force."
---Roberta Klimt, Times Literary Supplement"A terrific work of scholarship."
---Jonathan Bate, Catholic Herald"[McDowell] transforms our understanding of Milton’s emergent worldview with intelligence, authority and considerable flair. . . .
Poet of Revolution will be the standard account of its subject, and the starting point for further discussion of Milton’s early life, for a long time to come"
---Rhodri Lewis, Prospect"[For McDowell] the crucial question is the one that has defined and divided Milton scholarship from the beginning, the question of politics. . . . We need not wonder why Milton becomes a radical, [McDowell] suggest[s], for Milton himself tells us why: the poet made the polemicist and the writer the revolutionary."
---Catherine Nicholson, New York Review of Books"McDowell’s erudite
Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton helps us understand why and how Milton pursued poetic glory. . . . [He] skillfully integrates Milton’s literary world with his dangerous, complex, and rapidly changing world of religion and politics."
---A. M. Juster, Los Angeles Review of Books"Thoroughly researched and elegantly written. . . . A wonderful book."
---Joad Raymond, History Today"This is an important work, possibly the most significant contribution to Milton studies in more than a decade."
---Geoff Ridden, Early Modern Literary Studies"Erudite, engaged, original, and illuminating."
---Paul Hammond, Seventeenth Century"This new book by Nicholas McDowell is superior to anything that I’ve yet read."
---Paul Lay, FiveBooks"One of my favorite non-fiction works this year. . . . Every page is enjoyable."
---Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution"[A] magnificent intellectual biography."
---Daniel Johnson, Law & Liberty"McDowell’s new study,
Poet of Revolution, tries to account for Milton’s transformation from ‘obscure student poet in the early 1630s, albeit one with grand Virgilian pretensions, to a leading oppositional prose polemicist as civil war broke out a decade later.'"
---Maggie Kilgour, London Review of Books"[A] tour-de-force pilgrimage through Milton's formative years. . . .
Poet of Revolution is a heroic work, a judicious and well-written biography of England's greatest poet."
---Paul Krause, Merion West"One cannot do justice to McDowell’s achievement in this limited space. . . . Every page is rich in valuable information about Milton. . . . [A] major, innovative contribution to Milton studies." * Choice Reviews *
"[A] very ambitious and rewarding book. Any student of 17th-century history will learn a great deal from it."
---Pranav Jain, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog"A rich and detailed account of Milton's 'intellectual and political formation.' . . . [McDowell] brings Milton alive for readers, describing his material life, where he lived and travelled, what he read and puzzled over, and whom he engaged with at school and abroad."
---Amy Gais, Review of Politics"
As he chronicles the life of this cautious figure, McDowell . . . offers some of the most comprehensive
accounts of Milton's early works to appear in a biography, or perhaps anywhere else.
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---Blaine Greteman, Milton Quarterly
