John Milton (1608-74), the great English poet, is best known for his epic masterpiece, Paradise Lost. In addition to writing brilliant verse, he was a master of polemical prose. Milton was a private tutor and, during the Interregnum, the Secretary for Foreign Tongues in Oliver Cromwell's government.

William Kerrigan's previous books include The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost, for which he won the James Holly Hanford Award of the Milton Society of America. A former president of the Milton Society, he has earned numerous distinctions from that group, including its award for lifetime achievement. He is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.

John Rumrich is the author of Matter of Glory: A New Preface to Paradise Lost and Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation. An award-winning editor and writer, he is Thaman Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches early modern British literature.

Stephen M. Fallon is the author of Milton's Peculiar Grace: Self-Representation and Authority and Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England, winner of the Milton Society's Hanford Award. A recipient of the Milton Society's lifetime achievement award, he is the John J. Cavanaugh Professor in the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame.

Gordon Braden (translator) is Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English at the University of Virginia and co-author, with William Kerrigan, of The Idea of the Renaissance.