Areopagitica [1890]: A Speech of Mr. John Milton: For the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England

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Parliament’s victory in the Civil War prompted many questions about the right to print and liberty of the press. The Stationers Company, which enjoyed the Royal monopoly on printing and bookselling, petitioned Parliament for the continuation of its privileges under the new regime. This was a controversial request because Milton and others resented the Company’s censorship of political and religious publications in the years before the Civil War. Areopagitica urged Parliament to reject its petition in the name of intellectual freedom. This edition has a long introduction by James Russell Lowell [1819-1891], the notable poet, critic, editor and associate of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Reprint of the 1890 Grolier Club edition, which was limited to 325 copies.