John Milton's
Latin Defences are landmark texts in the history of English Civil War and Interregnum polemics. Part of Oxford University Press's authoritative
Complete Works of John Milton, this is the first edition of the Latin Defences to be edited to modern standards of scholarship, together with new translations into English which feature in easy to read facing pages. It offers a rich exploration of the publishing history of these works and contextualises them in the political exchanges and republican thought of the mid-seventeenth century. Departing from previous editors, Joad Raymond Wren bases his edition of the first and most significant Defence,
Pro populo Anglicano defensio, on its earliest publication, capturing anew its revolutionary freshness and enthusiasm. The annotations are especially alert to Milton's controversial engagement with the writings of his adversaries and to his careful alignment of his tracts with the diplomatic objectives of the republican governments of the 1650s.
About the AuthorJoad Raymond Wren,
Retired Professor of Early-Modern English Literature, Joad Raymond Wren is a writer and historian of early modern Europe who, before leaving academia, taught at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, East Anglia, Paris-Sorbonne and Queen Mary University of London. His previous books include
The Invention of the Newspaper, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain,
Milton's Angels, and, as editor,
Making the News, The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660,
News Networks in Early Modern Europe,
The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe and
The Complete Works of John Milton: Latin Defences. He has also written a novel,
All the Colours You Cannot Name