This Islands watchful Centinel

Abstract

To consider the writings of John Milton and Andrew Marvell in a collection on Restoration and Augustan literature is to focus on the last part of the careers of two men who had been friends and both employed by the Cromwellian regime. With Milton this is potentially to consider all three major poems, Paradise Lost (1667, second edition 1674), Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes (1671), and a small number of prose pamphlets, chiefly Of True Religion (1674), and some printings of earlier work issued before his death at age nearly sixty-six in late 1674. With Marvell it is to consider a range of political writing connected with his parliamentary experience until his sudden death at age fifty-seven in 1678, that is, a number of satirical poems (with many others of uncertain attribution), a few occasional poems, and some influential prose works. It is also to look at the way their oppositional roles were interpreted in the politics of the 1660s and 1670s. That was influenced in turn by their earlier activities and in the case of Milton by a lot of previous well-known political writing.