Dayton Haskin holds degrees from Yale and from the University of London, and teaches Renaissance and comparative literature at Boston College. The author of Milton's Burden of Interpretation, he is a former President of the Milton Society of America. He has also served as President of the John Donne Society and is a member of the advisory board for The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne. His current research focuses on the teaching of early modern literature in the period when English departments were first created in U.S. colleges.