What in Me Is Dark

A testament to the enduring power of a great work of literature to inspire. * Financial Times, *Books of the Year* * [A] thoughtful, wide-ranging and astute book... A remarkable feat of distillation and elucidation… As a response to such a complex and equivocal historical figure [as Milton] neither hagiography nor iconoclasm seems quite adequate, and Reade’s excellent book strikes a difficult and deft balance between the two. * Observer * Clever, wide-ranging... Reade is an academic, but his book is mercifully unlike most academic works. It is witty and sardonic.... [Reade] is sensitive and shockable. -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * New Statesman * Eminently readable... Reade includes a wealth of curious detail * The Telegraph * If we ever needed a lesson about the challenges of freedom it is now. Orlando Reade’s passionate and illuminating account of the afterlives of Paradise Lost is an urgent reminder that freedom - in all senses - is poetry: there to be loved, resisted, re-worked and made to sing again for each new generation. -- Lyndsey Stonebridge, author of We Are Free to Change the World An admirably lucid new book * Independent * Fresh and arresting... What in Me is Dark is a lucid and sometimes moving reminder of how Milton’s epic, for all its pre-modern erudition and doctrinal complexity, has continually been given new life by its modern readers. * Literary Review * Orlando Reade's immensely readable history of the reception of Paradise Lost shows how Milton's great poem vaults across the centuries to meet new readers, its radicalism undimmed. -- Adam Smyth, author of The Book-Makers What in Me is Dark, with its brisk canter over a field as wild and varied as Milton's own masterpiece, will send readers back to the original text with a new sense of its paradoxes, beauties and continuing relevance. * Financial Times * Wonderfully written, intelligent and moving... Reade reminds us that literature is action, that epic poetry has the power to liberate minds, pens, and voices. Behind every revolution is a song. As it turns out, so often that song has been Paradise Lost. -- Leah Redmond Chang, author of Young Queens Orlando Reade writes with exhilarating style, luminous clarity, and irreverent wit. Each page of What in Me Is Dark is aflame with ideas — on the relation between politics and evil, abolition and poetry—and with the sublimity of Milton's verse, deftly brought alive. Earth may be hell, but fallen angels, as Reade shows, have been our unexpected guides toward freedom and justice. -- Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods This is a rare and extraordinary book. In tracing the surprising revolutionary legacy of Milton’s epic, Reade has himself produced a liberatory text. This is not only a book for Milton scholars, but anyone invested in the poetics of freedom struggle. -- Natasha Lennard, author of Being Numerous