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Life of John Milton John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose polemicist, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth. Educated at Cambridge—visiting the continent—involved into the revolution—persecuted—writing epics. Background of John Milton John Milton was born on December 9,1608 on Bread Street in Cheapside , London , England to a scrivener and his wife. Milton’s parents had six children, and Milton was one of the three who survived. At age of 16 Milton entered Christ’s College, Cambridge. Perhaps the finest student in his class, Milton received his B.A. in 1629 and M.A. in 1632. Literary career of John Milton The 1st period was up to 1641, during which time he is to be seen chiefly as a son of the humanists and Elizabethans, although his Puritanism is not absent. LAllegre and IL Pens eroso (1632) are his early masterpieces, in which we find Milton a true offspring of the Renaissance, a scholar of exquisite taste and rare culture. Next came Comus, a masque. The greatest of early creations was Lycidas, a pastoral elegy on the death of a college mate, Edward King. Literary career of John Milton The second period is from 1641 to 1654, when the Puritan was in such complete ascendancy that he wrote almost no poetry. In 1641, he began a long period of pamphleteering for the puritan cause. For some 15 years, the Puritan in him alone ruled his writing. He sacrificed his poetic ambition to the call of the liberty for which Puritans were fighting. Literary career of John Milton The third period is from 1655 to 1671, when humanist and Puritan have been fused into an exalted entity. This period is the greatest in his literary life, epics and some famous sonnets. The three long poems are the fruit of the long contest within Milton of Renaissance tradition and his Puritan faith. They form the greatest accomplishments of any English poet except Shakespeare. In Milton alone, it would seem, Puritanism could not extin