This is a little off the beat and path for horror fans, but since it’s quite an accomplishment and by our very own Michael R. Collings, we wanted to make you aware of it.
After nearly 30 years in preparation, Wildside Press has just published the 650-page study by Michael R. Collings, Milton’s Century, a year-by-year, month-by-month, sometimes day-by-day timeline of the 17th Century placing Milton in the context of the religious, historical, cultural, social, artistic, and literary events of his time. It is designed for students who are interested in knowing what else was published at the same time as Paradise Lost, or just what effect the Great Plague had on the citizens of London, including Milton.
Description: No artist creates his works in a vacuum. Beyond the conscious influence of books read, artwork seen, minds probed (through conversation or exchange of letters), writers are in no small part products of everything that surrounds them = people, places, things, events.
Milton’s Century is designed to place one particular genius – John Milton, arguably the finest poet the English nation (perhaps even Western civilization) has produced – in the context of his time. And what a remarkable time it was – a century of revolutions, of discoveries, of literary and artistic efflorescence, of religious turmoil and political turbulence, of plagues and fires and ultimate rebuilding … and of the first adumbrations of the Modern Age. Milton’s Century becomes vital and alive for twenty-first-century readers through the vast network of connections and interconnections that Professor Collings articulates.
Borgo Literary Guides, No. 15.
Check out the paperback on Amazon: Milton’s Century
