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'.