MILTON, John.

£3,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington

The History of Britain, First edition of Milton's longest prose work, his fiercely anti-clerical, republican, and puritanical vision of the nation's history.Milton wrote the first four books between Charles I's execution on 30 January 1649 and his appointment as Latin Secretary on 13 March, adding the final two in the mid-1650s. He revised the manuscript in the late 1660s and published it a few years before his death."The strict and vigorous prose of the History... provides one of the best reflections of Milton's republican character" (Von Maltzahn, p. 222). Milton treats his mediaeval sources with contempt for both their style and their monkish assumptions. It is ideological yet also "a journey away from grand narratives. Milton abandons the myth of England as a chosen and privileged nation. He abandons the legacy of sixteenth-century Protestant historiography, the legacy of John Foxe and John Bale, with its patient chronicling of the sufferings and triumph of the godly in the providential progress towards an English reformation" (Campbell & Corns, p. 359).The edition reissued the following year with a cancel title by Allestry's successor, Spencer Hickman.

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