The complete online text of Areopagitica by John Milton.

John Milton's career as a writer of prose and poetry spans three distinct eras: Stuart England; the Civil War (1642-1648) and Interregnum, including the Commonwealth (1649-1653) and Protectorate (1654-1660); and the Restoration. When Elizabeth I, the so-...

John Milton's career as a writer of prose and poetry spans three distinct eras: Stuart England; the Civil War (1642-1648) and Interregnum, including the Commonwealth (1649-1653) and Protectorate (1654-1660); and the Restoration. When Elizabeth I, the so-...

John Milton's claim to continued recollection rests primarily, of course, on his preeminence as a poet. In 1642 he said that he had been forced by a sense of political duty to interrupt his efforts to become "a Poet soaring in the high region of his fanc...