John Milton

John Milton was born in London in 1608. At Cambridge he was already known as a poet; he then spent six years in study at home and travelled in Italy, where he visited Galileo under house arrest. When the English Civil War broke out he threw himself into the revolution, writing many political pamphlets defending freedom of the press and the execution of King Charles I, and serving as Latin secretary to Cromwell's republican government. Years of working day and night left him blind in his forties. After the Restoration he was briefly imprisoned, and once released, in poverty and solitude, he dictated the epic Paradise Lost.