William Poole was born and educated in St Andrews, and then at New College and Linacre College, Oxford, from 1995 to 2000. He was then Research Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge, and returned in 2004 to New College as a Tutorial Fellow in English. He is also the Fellow Librarian. His research lies in early modern literary, intellectual, and scientific history, and he has strong interests in bibliography, palaeography, and the history of libraries.

This volume is a consummate work of scholarship and a masterly contribution to the Oxford Milton. It provides everything that a narrowly focused Miltonist might wish for, but it also sees these materials as more than fodder for footnotes to Milton's published writings by locating Milton in the broader world of seventeenth-century scholarship, librarianship, and traffic in books...It is well worth adding to personal or institutional libraries.

• Part I: The Commonplace Book Part II: Ideas for Dramas from the Trinity College Manuscript Part III: Exempla of Printed Works by Milton with Presentation Inscriptions Appendix: The Theme on Early Rising Attributed to Milton