A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton: Volume 5, Part 4 [Paradise Lost, Book 4]

Acknowledgments

xvii Acknowledgments I most gratefully acknowledge the advice, encouragement, and support of those colleagues and friends who have helped to make this publication possible. Several research grants awarded by the Research Allocation Committee at the University of New Mexico permitted me to undertake the early work on this book at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. In addition to the staffs at those splendid research institutions , I am deeply indebted to the Zimmerman Library staff at the University of New Mexico. Most fondly, however, I acknowledge my debt to the librarians of Pattee Library and Paterno Library at the Pennsylvania State University and the librarians of Olin Library at Cornell University. With 80 pages of annotations on Paradise Lost, Book 4, Merritt Y. Hughes firmly set in place the foundation for this volume and established a place to begin, but he also provided an impressive critical standard to seek to maintain. To pursue the variorum project that Hughes, along with J. Milton French, A. S. P. Woodhouse, Douglas Bush, James E. Shaw, William Riley Parker, and Walter MacKellar first undertook in 1949 has been both humbling and inspiring. I thank the associate general editor, and then general editor, Paul J. Klemp, at the University of Wisconsin—Oshkosh for his unfailingly perceptive editorial oversight throughout the years we have worked together on this book. So too I am grateful to Kathleen Meyer and the editorial staff at Duquesne University Press. Working with the other current contributing editors of the Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton has been an honor and a pleasure. I am indebted to Archie Burnett, W. Gardner Campbell, Claudia Champagne, Stephen B. Dobranski, Edward Jones, Jameela Lares, John Leonard, John Mulryan, Stella Revard, and Louis Schwartz xviii Acknowledgments for all their help along the way, and with them I mourn the untimely passing of our dear colleague Richard J. DuRocher in 2010. Finally, any effort to acknowledge the extent of my debt to Albert C. Labriola, who determined to complete the project begun by that earlier generation of Miltonists, will forever remain inadequate. Professor Labriola’s firm, quiet support throughout my academic life has sustained it. The memory of his dignity, integrity, and dedication will endure for all of us who admired him and miss him. ...