John Milton

John Milton is best know for his poetry, especially Paradise Lost, but also for the more accessible, and shorter, Lycidas, and L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, plus one or two sonnets you will find in most anthologies - but an easier way into what he thought and believed in social and political terms, is through his prose writings. These were mostly pamphlets and tracts written in reaction to some political event or situation, but also included pamphlets on a wide variety of subjects including at least four on divorce, which for him was tied up with personal freedom. However, the text which has probably had the most relevance down the years and which can still be read with profit is the Areopagitica, which is a defence of freedom of expression and publication, and against censorship. It was written as a reaction to an attack on himself, in particular, a pamphlet on divorce he had written, and which some condemned as a "wicked book".