The Story of Marie Powell, Wife to John Milton

At the age of sixteen, Mary Powell marries poet John Milton. Their marriage, which plays out during the Civil War, is not one of love, but rather a practical arrangement that proves to be a devastating mismatch of temperaments and convictions. Her Royalist sympathies and his ardent parliamentarianism, her independence, and his austere way of life, 1640s England is a hotbed of clashing ideologies and so too is this marriage. The story, which unfolds in Marie's sensitive and searching journals, is a scathing portrait of one of England's most famous poets, a story of literary ambition and masculine egoism, and, like all of Graves' historical novels, a monumental achievement of closely watched history. One the one hand, this is a tender story of the romance Marie Powell found outside the walls of her tyrannical husband's house. On the other it is also a brilliant account of one of the most breathtaking epochs in English history, when that kingdom was ravaged by a bloody civil war and the tides of fortune swayed from one to the other side of the opposing camps - the King against his parliament, tyranny against freedom - culminating in the dramatic execution of Charles I.