Digging Up Milton

Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, Hampstead
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Event has ended
This event ended on Thursday 30th of January 2020
Admission
£4.50, booking recommended
Venue Information
Keats House
Wentworth Place, Keats Grove, Hampstead, NW3 2RR
Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Hampstead Heath 0.12 miles

Dr Jennifer Wallace (University of Cambridge) talks about Keats, Milton, writing historical fiction, and her novel’s depiction of late eighteenth-century London.

Digging Up Milton

London, 1790: John Milton, one of Britain's greatest poets, has been dead for over a century. Lizzie Grant, gravedigger, wife and entrepreneur, is very much alive.

When Milton's bones surface at St Giles' Church in London's Cripplegate, illiterate yet enterprising Lizzie seizes the opportunity to make her mark on history. But Lizzie hasn't accounted for Milton's power - as a hero, a revolutionary, and a literary genius. Amongst the circulating body parts and surrounded by hypocrisy, Lizzie's dreams start to unravel.

In 1790, it seems a lot of people want a piece of Milton.

And by 1818, John Keats himself was shown a lock of the poet's hair.

Jennifer Wallace's darkly humorous novel, Digging Up Milton (Cillian Press, 2015) vividly captures the boisterous, bawdy life of the 18th century London streets in a tale of greed, guilt and a paradise lost.

Tags: Art

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