Introduction: Childish things -- Coming of age on stage: Jonson's epicoene and the politics of childhood in early Stuart England -- Children, literature, and the problem of consent -- Contract's children: Thomas Hobbes and the culture of subjection -- 'Perplex't paths': youth and authority in Milton's early work -- 'Children of reviving libertie': the radical politics of Milton's pedagogy -- 'Youthful beauty': infancy and adulthood among the angels of Paradise Lost -- Children of paradise -- Epilogue: 'Children gathering pebbles on the shore'
