Book excerpt: Parker's life of Milton has long been accepted as one of the great literary biographies of the twentieth century, a unique accomplishment of scholarship based on a vast range of documentary evidence. Originally published in 1968, the biography was immediately acclaimed as `indispensable',`authoritative', as well as `controversial', and Parker himself was described in The Review of English Studies as `a living library and a walking museum'. Gordon Campbell's new and revised edition of Volume 1 forms a complete, self-contained, and wholly accessible account of Milton's life whichremains essential reading for the student of seventeenth-century literature, and for anyone who share Parker's enthusiasm for Milton's poetry.