This site, maintained by Milton scholars at the University of Richmond, is subscribed to by almost 500 scholars and students who want to learn more about the life and work of John Milton. This is by far the most exciting and comprehensive Milton site on the Web, offering news on Internet and audio-visual Milton projects, an opportunity to join an online discussion group, a detailed chronology of the author's life, the texts of his major and minor poems and prose, a list of scholarly articles about Milton's life and work, book reviews, announcements of events and symposia, and links to other Milton sites of interest on the Web.

John Milton
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/milton/

Check this site for famous quotes by John Milton; a biographical sketch; text from his poems, prose, and essays; images from the rare book and manuscript library of Columbia University; and links to biographical information, online books about Milton's work, book reviews, and other Milton sites. This page is part of the Luminarium English Literature of the Seventeenth Century site, which includes similar information on Richard Lovelace, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, and Henry Vaughan.

The Milton Reading Room
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/

This site, maintained by a professor of English and students at Dartmouth College, includes the text of Milton's Poems, Carmina Elegiaca, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes, and several pieces of prose. It also includes selected criticism from scholarly publications. This is a well-designed site, and excellent to use as a research tool.

BIOGRAPHY
John Milton (1608-1674), an English Puritan and a courageous defender of political liberty, defied both pope and king and was therefore in many respects a prophetic voice of the European opposition to established authority in the late Renaissance. His service to the Puritan cause during the English Civil War, including the writing of pamphlets containing strongly held views on public matters, made him a compelling figure in English society.

His great poetry, most of it written in his later years while he was totally blind, left the world its ineradicable Renaissance version of tragedy, defined as the freedom to seek our own destiny coupled with the prospect of failure should we overreach ourselves in defiance of God.