Houbraken, Jacob

John Milton (1608–1674) is regarded as one of the greatest English poets. He is best known for writing the epic Paradise Lost in 1667; however, he also was a master of political pamphleteering. Here, Milton is portrayed in reasonably modest clothing–a trend that appears in most representations of authors in English portraiture. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, print publishers responded to patterns of consumption by selling groups of literary portraits in uniform style.