Type: Exhibition section
Name: VIII. Milton and Sons: A Family Business
Detail: MILTON AND SONS, A FAMILY BUSINESS: In 1652, after a couple of years of waning eyesight, Milton went completely blind. From about 1650 onward, Milton began to rely extensively on a team of researchers, scribes, and amanuenses. Rutgers English Professor Ann Baynes Coiro has used the term “Milton and sons” to describe Milton’s close relationship with two of these young men, Edward and John Phillips, nephews of Milton who attended Milton’s small academy in the early 1640s, and who were adopted into Milton’s household. These young men went on to have publishing careers of their own, but it still remains unclear how much they helped Milton in researching and even co-writing some of the work of the period, particularly Milton’s second Latin defense of the English people, shown here, and a defense of himself.