Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #637687 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-08
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1216 pages

Customer Reviews

it's a 'riverside'..
I bought the riverside milton, as it has 'riverside' in the title; the riverside chaucer and shakespeare are excellent books, as is the riverside milton. i find the wide spaces on the pages very useful for making notes, the old spelling also gives you the 'genuine' milton. also, if you're a mere 'beginner' miltonist (as i, and perhaps other buyers may be)then the footnotes - although I admit sometimes unhelpful - are over all invaluable (more informative than say the Carey LOngman edition) - on top of this, you get the early 'prolusions' of milton's cambridge years and PL edition pictures- all really interesting stuff. if you're serious about milton, buy it.

Intrusive Editor
The Riverside Milton is a great resource in three ways. First, it maintains Milton's original spelling, which is interesting if not stricly necessary to understanding. Second, it contains his Latin poetry and translations, which helps one to form a more balanced view of his formative period. Third, its selection of prose is excellent.

Unless any of these factors is essential, though, I would not recommend it. The editor's introductions are long and rambling, with seemingly no structure. His comments are often annoying and intrusive in the footnotes. The pages are unnecessarily wide, with about half the width of the page taken up by blank space. His table of contents is utterly inadequate except for the prose selections. He offers no index of titles or first lines, and the excessive size of the pages adds to the frustration of flipping endlessly through the book to find a particular poem.

Personally, I would recommend the Everyman's Library edition for most uses. I'm sure the prose and the Latin can be found elsewhere in a more usable format, and I am not at all convinced that his original spelling is a great advantage, despite the fact that he sometimes spends half the introduction justifying his choice not to modernize the spelling.

Overall, I find myself forced more often to grapple with the editor's ideas that with Milton's--surely not a good thing.