John Milton
Poet
English poet who published his blank verse masterpiece, Paradise Lost, in 1667. His other works include Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and Animadversions.
He wrote his first two psalms at age fifteen and later attended Christ's College, Cambridge.
He wrote Paradise Lost during a period when he was blind and living in poverty.
He married twice and had five children.
During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, popular English opinion held Milton's literary work to be at least equal to -- and possibly superior to -- that of William Shakespeare.