THOMAS N. CORNS (ed.), The Milton Encyclopedia.

Abstract

REFERENCE books are often at their best when contributors have been able to distil in article form findings which they have already expounded at greater length elsewhere. Notably successful in this respect has been The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, many of whose entries are by authors of distinguished full-length biographies of their subjects. Thomas Corns’s Milton Encyclopedia scores some palpable hits of a similar kind. One of the book’s longest entries, on ‘The Life and Works of John Milton’, is by Barbara K. Lewalski, author of what is arguably the best recent biography of the poet. The article on ‘Paradise Lost’ is by David Loewenstein, whose volume in the Cambridge Landmarks of World Literature series is now perhaps the best student introduction to that poem. John K. Hale, whose authoritative Milton’s Languages appeared in 1997, contributes the article on that subject. Gordon Campbell, the co-author with Corns and others of a definitive study of De Doctrina Christiana, has written the article on ‘God’. The entry on ‘Andrew Marvell’ is the work of Nigel Smith, whose Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon (2010) is the fullest recent biography of that poet. Nicholas von Maltzahn, author of several excellent studies of Milton’s reputation and readership, contributes a valuable article on the ‘Influence of Milton’. The distinguished bibliographical scholar Ian Gadd gives a full and expert account, under ‘Stationers’, of Milton’s dealings with the book trade. And Sharon Achinstein, author of Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (1994) has contributed the entry on ‘Republicanism’.