Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost tells the story of John Milton's life as England's self-elected national poet and explains how the single greatest poem of the English language came to be written. In early 1642 Milton--an obscure private schoolmaster--promised English readers a work of literature so great that "they should not willingly let it die." Twenty-five years later, toward the end of 1667, the work he had pledged appeared in print: the...