In his Poems of 1645 John Milton, with the assistance of the bookseller Humphrey Moseley, whose words these are, presented himself as a man of letters, an Englishman hailing his native tongue. Not only the verse but the volume spoke these ambitions. Milton was no naive and cosseted scholar, unconcerned with the commercial pathways that carried his works into the hands of readers, but a canny author, attuned to the making and selling of books and pamphlets. His relationship with the book trade suggests that he was neither a coterie author, precious of his reputation and keen to identify and maintain his connection with socially elevated circles; nor was he a prototype of the professional author, viewing his readers as a source of income; rather, he occupied the intermediary sphere of a remunerated writer who chose the marketplace as the most effective means of addressing a broad public.

Milton’s earliest publications and performances appeared in contexts supported by a traditional, perhaps ‘courtly’, emphasis on interpersonal relations. His Latin prolusions were delivered before an audience at Cambridge University; his two epitaphs on Hobson, the University Carrier, modestly circulated in manuscript. His first printed work appears to have been some academic verses written c. 1628 on behalf of another student; his second, the poem ‘On Shakespeare’, appeared anonymously in the second folio of 1632.4 ‘Epitaphium Damonis’, which survives in a single copy, was probably printed in 1639, for circulation among select friends.