John Milton

John Milton was born in London in 1608 to a well-off family that gave him a rich education. He read Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Italian. From an early age he meant to write something great. For years he worked as a scholar and a fierce writer of pamphlets. He argued for divorce and for free speech in Areopagitica, and after Charles I was executed in 1649 he wrote in defence of the killing. That last stance mattered because Milton backed the Puritan side in England's civil wars, and he served the government of Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan general who came to rule England.