Paradise Lost might be the most influential poem written in English. For three and half centuries, readers across the world – especially those seeking revolutions in their own time – have found inspiration in its visions of freedom. In return, they have given Milton’s epic new life.

Drawing on his own experiences of teaching literature in prisons, Orlando Reade focuses on twelve unexpected readers – from Malcolm X to Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt to Thomas Jefferson – whose lives and works have shaped our world. He shows the many different, surprising and often contradictory ways in which Milton’s poem has been read across centuries and continents.

Boldly original, lively and far-reaching, What in Me Is Dark is the story of how a work of literature born in the ashes of a failed revolution became an indelible part of the modern imagination. Reade guides us through the epic, exploring how Milton came to write its dark and dazzling poetry, and offering a new account of its radical, ever-evolving legacy.