Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings, by John Milton

Citation

Keeble N & McDowell N (eds.) (2013) Vernacular Regicide and Republican Writings, by John Milton. The Complete Works of John Milton, VI. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/academic/series/literature/oetjm/9780199218059.do

Abstract
- Based on fresh collation of, and research into, original editions and manuscript record of these texts - The first edition of these texts in a single volume - First scholarly edition of these texts for over 50 years - Fullest introduction and annotation of these texts available - Parallel printing of the two 1660 editions of The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth This is the fourth volume to be published in Oxford's 11-volume edition of the Complete Works of John Milton, the first complete scholarly edition for nearly 100 years. It brings together (for the first time in a single volume) Milton's English writing in prose on the political issues that exercised him throughout his life - civil and religious liberty, republicanism and the constitution of a free commonwealth, the rights and duties of citizens, resistance of tyranny and the role of military force in securing national stability. The eleven pieces here presented in chronological order, from The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) to Milton's last prose work, his translation of the proclamation announcing the election of John Sobieski as King of Poland (1674), articulate his responses to the unprecedented events of the seventeenth century - civil war, regicide, the Commonwealth, Cromwellian rule, the Restoration of monarchy and the restored Stuart regime - events which shaped the social, political and religious structures of modern Britain. They do so with unrivalled polemical and rhetorical skill, instinct with revolutionary fervour and political idealism. Each title is freshly edited from newly examined and collated copies of either the first and subsequent seventeenth-century editions or of the manuscript record to give the most accurate and authoritative texts. A headnote to each analyses and discusses (often with new evidence) its composition, production and reception. A very substantial general introduction sets the writings in the context of European intellectual history and of contemporary British controversy and polemic. References and allusions to events and to texts are elucidated by full and detailed annotation and commentary which takes full account of recent Milton scholarship but also often draws on original research. Taken together, these features constitute the definitive edition of these texts for the 21st century.

People

Professor Neil Keeble

Emeritus Professor, English Studies