John Milton
English poet and civil servant (1608-1674) · United Kingdom · Writers · Died at 65
John Milton is read about 1,792 times a day, in 106 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?Paradise Lost - 12 books in blank verse about Satan, the Fall, and God's judgment - made Milton untouchable in the canon. But he was a working polemicist first: his 1644 Areopagitica defending press freedom remains one of the sharpest attacks on censorship ever written.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 12
Blue plaque on 1 Bread Street, London, commemorating Milton's birthplace
Portrait of Milton at age 10 in Milton's Cottage, Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, painted by Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen
Commemorative blue plaque 'John Milton lived here 1632-1638' at Berkyn Manor Farm, Horton, Berkshire
Title page of the 1644 edition of Areopagitica![The back of no 19 York Street (1848). In 1651, Milton moved into a "pretty garden-house" in Petty France, Westminster. He lived there until the Restoration. Later it became No. 19 York Street, belonged to Jeremy Bentham, was occupied successively by James Mill and William Hazlitt, and finally was demolished in 1877.[40]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/19_York_Street%2C_Westminster_%281848%29.jpg/330px-19_York_Street%2C_Westminster_%281848%29.jpg)
The back of no 19 York Street (1848). In 1651, Milton moved into a "pretty garden-house" in Petty France, Westminster. He lived there until the Restoration. Later it became No. 19 York Street, belonged to Jeremy Bentham, was occupied successively by James Mill and William Hazlitt, and finally was demolished in 1877.[40]
Engraving by William Faithorne, 1670
In their own words 10
, O nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray / Warbl'st at eve, when all the woods are still.
Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven's joy
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, / Stol'n on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
Family
John MiltonPartners
Children
Is this everyone?
Only relatives with a profile here are drawn, so a family can be larger than this. A line here can also be wrong.
Correct this familyAbout this person
Milton studied at Cambridge in the 1620s, then spent years writing poetry privately and cranking out radical pamphlets as Charles I's rule fractured into civil war. His politics were dangerous enough to land him a post under Cromwell's Commonwealth, serving as a civil servant through the 1650s. The Restoration in 1660 cost him that platform, and by then he'd lost his sight. He used the isolation to finish Paradise Lost, published in 1667 - an epic in unrhymed verse, the first modern English writer to try it outside translation or theatre. He died in 1674, broke and on the margins in England, but his reputation across Europe was already fixed. Samuel Johnson, a Tory, called him an "acrimonious and surly republican" but admitted Paradise Lost might be the greatest design the human mind ever attempted.
Writers from the United Kingdom 6
Fame.am measures public visibility signals. It does not measure human value, talent, morality, or credibility.