What do you think?
Rate this book
Milton in American
When Peter Ackroyd, one of Britain's undisputed literary masters, writes a new novel, it is a literary event. With his last novel, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree , "as gripping and ingenious a murder mystery as you could hope to come across," in the words of the San Francisco Chronicle , he reached a whole new level of critical and popular success. Now, with his trademark blending of historical fact and fictive fancy, Ackroyd has placed the towering poet of Paradise Lost in the new Eden that is colonial America.
John Milton, aging, blind, fleeing the restoration of English monarchy and all the vain trappings that go with it ("misrule" in his estimation), comes to New England, where he is adopted by a community of fellow puritans as their leader. With his enormous powers of intellect, his command of language, and the awe the townspeople hold him in, Milton takes on absolute power. Insisting on strict and merciless application of puritan justice, he soon becomes, in his attempt at regaining paradise, as much a tyrant as the despots from whom he and his comrades have sought refuge, more brutal than the "savage" native Americans.
As always, Ackroyd has crafted a thoroughly enjoyable novel that entertains while raising provocative questions--this time about America's founding myths. With a resurgence of interest in the puritans (in the movie adaptations of The Scarlet Letter and the forthcoming The Crucible ), Milton in America is particularly relevant. It is also entirely absorbing--in short, vintage Ackroyd.
John Milton, aging, blind, fleeing the restoration of English monarchy and all the vain trappings that go with it ("misrule" in his estimation), comes to New England, where he is adopted by a community of fellow puritans as their leader. With his enormous powers of intellect, his command of language, and the awe the townspeople hold him in, Milton takes on absolute power. Insisting on strict and merciless application of puritan justice, he soon becomes, in his attempt at regaining paradise, as much a tyrant as the despots from whom he and his comrades have sought refuge, more brutal than the "savage" native Americans.
As always, Ackroyd has crafted a thoroughly enjoyable novel that entertains while raising provocative questions--this time about America's founding myths. With a resurgence of interest in the puritans (in the movie adaptations of The Scarlet Letter and the forthcoming The Crucible ), Milton in America is particularly relevant. It is also entirely absorbing--in short, vintage Ackroyd.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
4 people are currently reading
215 people want to read
About the author
Peter Ackroyd
184 books1,496 followersPeter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.
Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.
Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.
Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.
Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.
His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.
From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.
Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.
In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 13, 2015
I own a complete works of Milton. While I have read, thanks to a graduate course in Milton, the best thing I can say about Milton is this: It is heavy enough to kill someone so I don’t have to risk damn to any of my three complete works of Shakespeare.
I’ll admit my view of Milton comes partly from the fact that he seemed to be a bit of an asshole. I mean, I have yet to meet anyone who is surprised at his marital problems.
So why did I read this book?
Because Peter Ackroyd wrote it and because Ackroyd made me look at Thomas More in a new way.
He doesn’t quite do the same here, though that doesn’t seem to be the intent.
The most disconcerting thing about this alternate history is the shifting perspectives but once you get use to that this novel flies.
And yet it is about a crash.
Milton’s most famous work is Paradise Lost, though I find his shorter poetry to be far more beautiful, and Ackroyd’s novel is Paradise Lost. In Milton’s epic poem, the Fall refers not only to Adam and Eve, but also to Satan himself. In this novel, it isn’t so much that Adam and Eve sin, but perhaps God or Satan does.
In Ackroyd’s fall, Milton travels to the Colonies (America) when the Restoration occurs. As a supporter of the Roundheads and as a writer who wrote an essay justifying the execution of Charles I, blind Milton fears for his safety. Before he leaves England, he gains a boy, Goosequill. While Milton’s flight is Ackroyd’s invention, It is a believable one for some regicides did flee to the Colonies. So like all of Ackroyd’s literary alternate histories, this is something that could have happened but didn’t.
In Milton’s epic, the fall is caused by Satan in the form of the serpent, who verbally seduces Eve into eating the apple. Adam succumbs to the temptation not for the same reason as Eve, but out of compassion – he does not want to lose her or to see her punished alone. His sin is one of compassion. Eve sins not only for knowledge, but also out of ignorance.
In Ackroyd’s historical novel, the Adam and Eve figures, Goose and his wife Kate, sin (if it is a sin) out of compassion and for joy. Milton becomes both God and Satan. His rigidity is what leads to the sin. In many ways, this is at the heart of the story of the Fall, for If God is just and merciful (and if you are Christian this is the view. In the OT, however, God does not advocate turning the other cheek), then why such a harsh punishment, as especially in Milton’s version, Eve is not given the same instructions as Adam? Is it a fair punishment? And if God created Satan, then surely God, must have created the sin as well?
And as careful a writer as he is, Ackroyd is also a careful reader, and he knows that Paradise never lasts, that we always, willing or unwillingly destroy that perfection. A perfect place for your dream house is destroyed in some basic sense when you build that house there. Milton’s presence in his new Eden will lead to changes.
And that we never truly learn from the past.
Like Milton’s fall, which is also a re-telling of the English Civil War, Ackroyd’s novel does concern a war in paradise.
But Ackroyd’s novel about Milton and the fall raises more thought about sin and the nature of power than Milton’s poem itself. Because Ackroyd pushes and challenges and presents what should be versus what was.
I’ll admit my view of Milton comes partly from the fact that he seemed to be a bit of an asshole. I mean, I have yet to meet anyone who is surprised at his marital problems.
So why did I read this book?
Because Peter Ackroyd wrote it and because Ackroyd made me look at Thomas More in a new way.
He doesn’t quite do the same here, though that doesn’t seem to be the intent.
The most disconcerting thing about this alternate history is the shifting perspectives but once you get use to that this novel flies.
And yet it is about a crash.
Milton’s most famous work is Paradise Lost, though I find his shorter poetry to be far more beautiful, and Ackroyd’s novel is Paradise Lost. In Milton’s epic poem, the Fall refers not only to Adam and Eve, but also to Satan himself. In this novel, it isn’t so much that Adam and Eve sin, but perhaps God or Satan does.
In Ackroyd’s fall, Milton travels to the Colonies (America) when the Restoration occurs. As a supporter of the Roundheads and as a writer who wrote an essay justifying the execution of Charles I, blind Milton fears for his safety. Before he leaves England, he gains a boy, Goosequill. While Milton’s flight is Ackroyd’s invention, It is a believable one for some regicides did flee to the Colonies. So like all of Ackroyd’s literary alternate histories, this is something that could have happened but didn’t.
In Milton’s epic, the fall is caused by Satan in the form of the serpent, who verbally seduces Eve into eating the apple. Adam succumbs to the temptation not for the same reason as Eve, but out of compassion – he does not want to lose her or to see her punished alone. His sin is one of compassion. Eve sins not only for knowledge, but also out of ignorance.
In Ackroyd’s historical novel, the Adam and Eve figures, Goose and his wife Kate, sin (if it is a sin) out of compassion and for joy. Milton becomes both God and Satan. His rigidity is what leads to the sin. In many ways, this is at the heart of the story of the Fall, for If God is just and merciful (and if you are Christian this is the view. In the OT, however, God does not advocate turning the other cheek), then why such a harsh punishment, as especially in Milton’s version, Eve is not given the same instructions as Adam? Is it a fair punishment? And if God created Satan, then surely God, must have created the sin as well?
And as careful a writer as he is, Ackroyd is also a careful reader, and he knows that Paradise never lasts, that we always, willing or unwillingly destroy that perfection. A perfect place for your dream house is destroyed in some basic sense when you build that house there. Milton’s presence in his new Eden will lead to changes.
And that we never truly learn from the past.
Like Milton’s fall, which is also a re-telling of the English Civil War, Ackroyd’s novel does concern a war in paradise.
But Ackroyd’s novel about Milton and the fall raises more thought about sin and the nature of power than Milton’s poem itself. Because Ackroyd pushes and challenges and presents what should be versus what was.
September 25, 2014
A surprisingly-readable alternate history where blind John Milton travels to America and becomes the leader of a Puritan colony. I don't know very much about Milton, but I still enjoyed it; it doesn't hurt that I love Ackroyd's books.
July 1, 2008
A big disappointment, considering how much I enjoyed some of his other fiction about English writers. The conceit is that Milton did not go into hiding at the Restoration in 1660, but instead ran away to the Eden of the New World, and there became the head of a small town of Puritans. Interesting idea, but Ackroyd apparently had no place to go with it, other than to imply that Milton's main problem was sexual repression. Pretty unconvincing. I'm not very familiar with Milton's controversial pamphleteering, where I guess he could get pretty shrill, but the voice in this book is not even close to the voice I hear in Paradise Lost or the other poetry. And it illumined that poetry not at all.
July 27, 2016
I liked the concept of this book; the author imagines that Milton fled from England to America to join one of the Puritan settlements there. It has echoes of The Scarlet Letter and, of course, Paradise Lost. However, Peter Ackroyd cannot seem to resist doing something overblown in everything he writes. The passages where he describes Milton being lost in the forest and 'regaining' his eyesight were unnecessary and didn't contribute anything to the rest of the story, except to let the writer off the hook in coming up with a believable psychological motive for later events.
So, all in all, it's a book with some potential that is ultimately unsatisfactory. I'll have to give up on Ackroyd. I've read several of his books and I haven't really appreciated any of them.
So, all in all, it's a book with some potential that is ultimately unsatisfactory. I'll have to give up on Ackroyd. I've read several of his books and I haven't really appreciated any of them.
September 7, 2014
A thoroughly nasty book, not because it's poorly written - Ackroyd is incapable of incompetence - but because Milton is presented as a wholly unsympathetic figure from the outset. We simply don't care about this odious puritan nor wish to follow him across the Atlantic where, frankly, I lost him with a feeling of heartfelt disgust.
June 4, 2014
I don't understand the criticism of this novel: it's a very good story and exceptionally well told. What more does one need?
September 26, 2024
I read lots of Ackroyd 30+ years ago and was fascinated by his creative reimaginings of the past. Not read anything since til this, which isn't as good as his earlier books. Milton only really works as a (thoroughly repugnant) character if the reader makes a conscious effort to create his voice. Goosequill, the other main character doesn't have enough depth and the book takes a dramatic shift (for the better) about 3 fifths of the way in, going off in a new narrative direction.
All that sounds a bit critical, but 4 stars anyway as the book still has Ackroyd's unique voice immersed in the authentic language of the past - in this case deranged Puritan arrogance - stamped all over it. As a European looking at the modern US, maybe those belligerent, blinkered Puritan attitudes aren't really so historical after all.
All that sounds a bit critical, but 4 stars anyway as the book still has Ackroyd's unique voice immersed in the authentic language of the past - in this case deranged Puritan arrogance - stamped all over it. As a European looking at the modern US, maybe those belligerent, blinkered Puritan attitudes aren't really so historical after all.
December 4, 2023
"Ralph Kempis and Goosequill were talking quietly together as they rode at the front of the army from Mary Mount. Goosequill had intended to move on, further westwards, but how could he abandon his friend at such a time? 'I tell you this, Goose.' Kempis was grave, now that a true confrontation was about to begin. 'I did not seek this quarrel. It is John Milton who has disturbed the peace of our new land and brought misery to us.'
'I know it. He has turned himself into a devil.'
'A devil who talks piously of heaven. He grew too proud.'
'No, Ralph. It was not pride.' He could not find the word to express Milton's strangeness after his return from the Indians. 'He grew apart. Something happened.'" (268).
'I know it. He has turned himself into a devil.'
'A devil who talks piously of heaven. He grew too proud.'
'No, Ralph. It was not pride.' He could not find the word to express Milton's strangeness after his return from the Indians. 'He grew apart. Something happened.'" (268).
July 24, 2022
I felt like giving up after about 50 pages. I should have done. I was hoping for an interesting tale about how Milton was changed by America, but no. He was a loathsome religious bigot (at least in Ackroyd's novel), as were most of the people in the story, filled with hatred and contempt for the rest of the world, and convinced that the Puritan way was the only life worth living. Most of the book was taken up with his endless rants about Papist whores and whoremongers, blasphemers, and savages. Towards the end, it looked as though there might be some redemption, but there wasn't. A dull, depressing read.
May 1, 2019
I am always fond of characters who can exchange wit with one another, and I see much of that in this book. There is plenty of comedy to interest the reader, but the comedy turns to depth and meaning towards the end. The philosophy is not as deep as other novels that I have read, but it is there, and there are multiple views to take once the last line has been read. It is a short novel, and I would suggest reading it.
August 20, 2022
Read this a while ago so here are my memories. First, Milton did not go America, so the story is a "what if" story. Arriving there was quite dramatic for the characters. And lots happen in the early settlement and I can't remember the ending. It got quite fantastical and outrageous. You may find you don't like Milton as portrayed in this novel.
And now I've the other reviews. Yep, I'll leave my review as it stands.
And now I've the other reviews. Yep, I'll leave my review as it stands.
Read
January 17, 2025Enjoyable on the whole. The conceit of Milton fleeing to America after the restoration is sound as is his interactions with Puritanism. I was less convinced by the sleights of hand that it took to get him to America and fall in with just the right community. Moving Merry Mount in history and changing the facts to suit the narrative irritated. Still an interesting, if not a totally convincing what if exploration.
January 21, 2021
This alternative history of John Milton made me think of a music biopic in in which situations and dialog hint at well known work the protagonist will go on to create. In this case Paradise Lost. If you are familiar with Milton's work you may get more out of this book. Otherwise it is enjoyable enough to stand on its own.
March 23, 2024
I liked the idea of the book more than the actual book, probably because the Milton character was such a disappointment. Not unrealistic it has to be said but loathsome. Thank goodness for Goose. And there was quite a lot of humour in there.
September 16, 2017
I've admitted defeat and abandoned this. All the characters were either annoying or dislikeable.
March 30, 2020
Ackroyd is an excellent writer, one of England's finest. His inspiration is commonly indebted to London, how the city has been made and transformed over time, the echos of people and events which forever inhabit its streets and buildings.
As the title suggests, this story goes somewhere else. The imaginative premise is that Milton, blind poet of Paradise Lost and a raving Puritan, left England upon the Restoration and lived out his final years in America, leaving his homeland "in order to save England...to be England" in the New World.
The tale is told by Goosequill, a very humble and humane traveling companion for the fiery Milton to set sail with, which allows Ackroyd to reflect Milton's unstinting thoughts and behaviour against a more temperate mirror. And make no mistake, Ackroyd's Milton is monstrously unflattering.
Ackroyd is renowned for his research. Fom what he pieced together he clearly didn't like the character of the great poet. The Milton of this book is an unstinting, unconscionable fool of a man, not just literally blind but blind also to his own repressed desires.
I wasn't comfortable with this characterisation. Fortunate then that Ackroyd is a writer of considerable ability, and having a great poet and rhetorician as his protagonist allowed him to display his lyrical gifts.
Forget the character assassination and savour the prose.
As the title suggests, this story goes somewhere else. The imaginative premise is that Milton, blind poet of Paradise Lost and a raving Puritan, left England upon the Restoration and lived out his final years in America, leaving his homeland "in order to save England...to be England" in the New World.
The tale is told by Goosequill, a very humble and humane traveling companion for the fiery Milton to set sail with, which allows Ackroyd to reflect Milton's unstinting thoughts and behaviour against a more temperate mirror. And make no mistake, Ackroyd's Milton is monstrously unflattering.
Ackroyd is renowned for his research. Fom what he pieced together he clearly didn't like the character of the great poet. The Milton of this book is an unstinting, unconscionable fool of a man, not just literally blind but blind also to his own repressed desires.
I wasn't comfortable with this characterisation. Fortunate then that Ackroyd is a writer of considerable ability, and having a great poet and rhetorician as his protagonist allowed him to display his lyrical gifts.
Forget the character assassination and savour the prose.
September 13, 2014
What if? What if, instead of living quietly in London for the final years of his life after the Restoration, John Milton had emigrated to America? In this counterfactual history novel, Peter Ackroyd imagines the blind poet escaping the return of the monarchy with the aid of a young London lad who becomes his secretary and whom he names Goosequill, and leading a community of cheerless Puritans in the New World. Many ordinary pleasures, such as alcohol and music, are banned or severely restricted, the native population exist only to be converted or bartered with, and punishment is harsh.
Conflict arises with the arrival from Virginia of Ralph Kempis and his mixed community of immigrants and natives, who establish a Roman Catholic community with significant native American influences right next door to Milton's Puritanical settlement.
This is not Ackroyd's best book by a long way, but it explores in a memorable way the religious conflicts of the Restoration, and what happens when people who only theorise about religion and government are given the opportunity to exercise actual power in the real world. The replacement of one type of tyranny with another reminds us that right is not always on one side, and that governing - even with the best of intentions - can be a messy business.
Conflict arises with the arrival from Virginia of Ralph Kempis and his mixed community of immigrants and natives, who establish a Roman Catholic community with significant native American influences right next door to Milton's Puritanical settlement.
This is not Ackroyd's best book by a long way, but it explores in a memorable way the religious conflicts of the Restoration, and what happens when people who only theorise about religion and government are given the opportunity to exercise actual power in the real world. The replacement of one type of tyranny with another reminds us that right is not always on one side, and that governing - even with the best of intentions - can be a messy business.
February 23, 2012
I have to qualify my four-star rating. I "really liked it," yes. But I did not like how Milton was characterized in the second half of the novel. I couldn't tell if Ackroyd was just writing the story as it came to him, or if he really believes Milton was such a horrible human being. I love Milton (though I wouldn't want to have a beer with him or anything. Ben Jonson would be more companionable...), so I sort of took it personally that Ackroyd paints him as a tyrant and as such a zealous Christian.
That said, it's possible that Ackroyd wrote Milton as a hypocrite to make the parallel between Milton's Satan and American Milton work.
The first half of the book is delightful and funny. I laughed out loud at some of the jokes and references. It helps to have Paradise Lost fresh on the brain, but Ackroyd doesn't limit his allusions to major works. Snatches of Tyranny of Kings, Aereopagitica, and even Lycidas are there too. It was a pleasure to read Milton using his own words, and it was a riot to read Goosequill's responses to the poet.
That said, it's possible that Ackroyd wrote Milton as a hypocrite to make the parallel between Milton's Satan and American Milton work.
The first half of the book is delightful and funny. I laughed out loud at some of the jokes and references. It helps to have Paradise Lost fresh on the brain, but Ackroyd doesn't limit his allusions to major works. Snatches of Tyranny of Kings, Aereopagitica, and even Lycidas are there too. It was a pleasure to read Milton using his own words, and it was a riot to read Goosequill's responses to the poet.
August 17, 2016
Milton in America by Peter Ackroyd was a disappointment. The premise of Milton having left England because of the political climate is a good start, but Ackroyd fails to hold the attention of the reader. At times trite and predictable the story suffers from Ackroyd's inability to find a voice for the times which is not stuffy. Skip this one.
June 30, 2012
I should have stopped when I saw this described as picaresque. Not my sort of thing at all. As a premise it is celver, but the clevernessgot in the way of any enjoyment for me. i thought of mixture of comedy and tragedy too unsettling.
June 11, 2015
False
August 6, 2011
I didn't finish it but got to page 218 so read quite a lot. I got a bit fed up of Mr Milton and the miserable Puritans.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews