John Milton, published in 1991 by Oxford University Press, is a complete edition of Milton’s poetry and prose works, with extensive textual notes.

The Complete Poems, published in 1999 by Penguin Classics, contains all of Milton’s poems in a fully annotated edition.

A Preface to Milton, by Lois Potter, with a revised edition published in 2000 by Longman, is a slim book that provides background information on Milton and the period in which he lived.

George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (1990), edited by Mario A. Di Cesare and published by W. W. Norton & Company, contains poems by Milton’s contemporaries. This text also includes critical essays on these poets.

John Donne, published in 1990 by Oxford University Press, is a complete edition of Donne’s work. A contemporary of Milton, Donne composed both secular and religious poetry, also manipulating and occasionally inventing variations on the traditional forms of poetry.

Sir Thomas Browne: Selected Writings (1995) is edited by Claire Preston and published by Carcanet Press, Limited. Browne, one of Milton’s contemporaries, is best known for his essays and treatises that explore religion and melancholy, important issues in seventeenth-century thought.