In this expertly curated collection Blair Hoxby and Ann Baynes Coiro make a compelling case for nothing less than a new approach to periodization, offering a substantive alternative to myriad studies in which Milton marks the end of the English Renaissance or Paradise Lost the culmination of Renaissance epic, humanism, or Reformation poetics. Instead the volume directs our attention to Milton’s earliest readers during the era that the editors designate as the Long Restoration, a period with admittedly fuzzy termini that spans from the 1650s movements to restore the Stuart monarch Charles II to the throne to the decline of Jacobitism around 1750. Hoxby and Coiro draw together an exceptional array of essays to make the import of this period clear, illustrating not only how early critics framed Milton’s works for generations of readers, but also how Milton served as a touchstone in the development of English poetry and poetics. This massive volume affords unfamiliar readers a thorough introduction to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poets and critics for whom Milton was a signal influence. David A. Harper, for instance, delivers a sharp and erudite treatment of Richard Bentley’s comments on Paradise Lost, while Hoxby, Denise Gigante, and Catherine Gimelli Martin, in turn, contribute remarkable essays on the Richardsons, Joseph Addison, and John Dennis (respectively). Coiro judiciously explores the work of the Chorus in Samson Agonistes in relation to period poetics; Steven N. Zwicker details John Dryden’s debts to and departures from Milton; and Laura L. Knoppers shows how Milton shaped the reception of Ovid in their poetic meditations on love and sex. John Leonard sheds new light on how Paradise Lost influenced Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad while Sophie Gee demonstrates to great effect how his engagement with Milton shaped Pope’s comportments to politics and commercial publishing. Other exemplary studies train our attention to minor poets. Dustin D. Stewart, for instance, illustrates how John Paris and John Dennis, among others, shared Milton’s materialist preoccupations as well as his investment in blank verse. Excellent essays like these invite readers to reconsider poetic continuities and discontinuities across the Restoration and to reorganize standard canons of early modern poetry.

Other strong studies trouble critical assumptions concerning Milton’s political and theological afterlives. In his magnificent chapter on Milton, Isaac Newton, and Arianism, Stephen M. Fallon urges scholars to look much more diligently at Newton’s theological and philosophical oeuvre. Gregory Chaplin and N. K. Sugimura also offer smart studies of Milton’s experiments in Christology and materialism, respectively. In her canny study of marriage and contract, moreover, Sharon Achinstein tracks the limits of secularization theses in and beyond the Long Restoration. And Martin Dzelzainis and Mary Nyquist, in turn, deliver remarkable studies of slavery: Dzelzainis attends to Milton’s accounts of antique slavery and theological obedience while Nyquist collates accounts of self-preservation and labor in Milton, Locke, and Daniel Defoe before locating these in relation to the Royal African Company. Several essays focus on neglected works and genres: Milton’s Literae, for instance. Both Jason Peacey and Nicholas von Maltzahn demonstrate how Milton’s letters, in Latin and English, shaped his republican legacy. And in one of the high points in a collection full of high points, Joanna Picciotto investigates physico-theology, demonstrating how its natural histories and descriptive resources were crucial to the development of the novel as well as broad theses on ethics and identification. Put simply, these superlative essays mine a new archive and set a new agenda for Milton studies.

There is thus much to recommend in this volume. It is, however, not without its limits. Most notable is its preoccupation with England and English, despite recent studies of the Restoration that emphasize its international contours. The Long Restoration that takes shape across this volume generally excludes Ireland, Scotland, the Continent, and the Atlantic World at large, nor is there much attention to Milton’s impact in languages or locales beyond England. Several notable essays do indeed reverse this trend. Peacey, for instance, examines the Continental career of Milton’s Literae; and Nigel Smith adroitly attends to Theodore Haak’s early German translation of Paradise Lost, laying bare the points of contact and shared interests that drew English- and German-speaking communities together in the period. More work like this is necessary as we assess the scope, meaning, and utility of the Long Restoration. And, overwhelmingly, the volume is precisely suited to these ends. One of its greatest (and rarest) virtues is the degree to which the editors test their own claims concerning periodization. Hoxby and Coiro include two critical treatments of the terms and termini of the Long Restoration, by Pincus and John Leonard, both of whom illustrate why we might be reluctant to adopt the very periodization the editors propose. Even readers who are skeptical of the Long Restoration will find these essays sound and insightful.