John Milton’s Freedom of the Press Pamphlet Printers Found
►https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2019/november/john-milton-mystery.html
Though John Milton’s “Areopagitica” — one of the most significant documents in the history of the freedom of the press — was first published 375 years ago, the printer of the pamphlet has — until now — remained unknown.
An interdisciplinary team of literary scholars, statisticians and computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University has attributed the Nov. 23, 1644, printing of “Areopagitica” to the London printers Matthew Simmons and Thomas Paine, with the possible involvement of Gregory Dexter. The results of the research will be available in the Spring 2020 issue of Milton Studies.
“It’s tremendous to celebrate Areopagitica’s 375th birthday by learning something new about such a foundational document,” said Christopher Warren, associate professor of English in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and senior author on the paper.
For fear of persecution and punishment, printers in Britain from 1473 to 1800 declined to attach their names to about a quarter of known books and pamphlets, leaving the origin of many historical texts unidentified.
