Poet of Revolution

"""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"