In this first book devoted to Milton's engagement with Ireland, Lee Morrissey takes an archipelagic approach to his subject. The study focuses on the period before the Cromwellian Conquest, explaining Milton's emergence as a public figure because of Ireland and tracing the paradoxical resonances of Milton's republicanism in Ireland to this day. Informed by developments in Irish history but foregrounding a lucid discussion of Milton's governmental prose works, Morrissey explores the tension between Milton's long-established image as a proto-Enlightenment, democratic figure, and the historical reality of his association with a Protestant invading force. Milton's Ireland incisively negotiates this complex subject, addressing clear absences in Milton scholarship, in the history of Ireland, and in the fraught relationship between Ireland and England.

‘The story of the Irish dimension of Milton's work, the decades of inter-island conflict unfolding before and during Milton's life, needs to be told, and Lee Morrissey tells it exceptionally well. Milton's Ireland makes valuable inroads into the study of early modern Ireland's cultural plurality, its complex relations to Britain, and the tensions operative in the British Isles (rather than the Atlantic archipelago). In this expertly researched and nuanced investigation, Morrissey also boldly demonstrates how Ireland challenges Milton's sense of Englishness.'

Elizabeth Sauer - FRSC, Professor of English, Brock University, Canada

‘Through a series of expertly-crafted explanations, Professor Morrissey shows how Milton was imbricated in a number of contexts and historical processes that are centered on Ireland and Irish politics. Although Milton invariably adopts an Anglocentric worldview in his political and literary visions, deracinating England from its island neighbour, the spectre of Ireland haunts his writings. This is a major work that resituates one of England's most canonical authors in relation to the conception of Britain; the reality of Ireland; and the forces of nation-building and colonial expansion that underpin the seismic shifts taking place in seventeenth-century Europe.'

Andrew Hadfield - FBA, Professor of English, University of Sussex

‘Morrissey makes the case for Ireland as a far more significant theme in [Milton's] oeuvre than has previously been acknowledged. … In drawing our attention to the place of Ireland in his subject's imagination, [Morrissey] adds to the store of interpretive possibility.’

Roberta Klimt Source: Times Literary Supplement