Wife to Mr. Milton

by Robert Graves

From the dust jacket...
With impressive literary power, with a beauty that makes this novel live and glow in the consciousness of the reader, Robert Graves unfolds the story of the tragic and eventful life of Marie Powell, who, at the age of sixteen, was pushed into marrying the man who was England’s greatest epic poet—and knew it—John Milton.

The story, by an acknowledged master of the historical novel, has a triple fascination.

First, for its tender account of the romance Marie Powell found outside the walls of her tyrannical husband’s house, and the utter misery to which he enforced her.

Then, for the astute study of the “sublime” Milton of Paradise Lost, at last portrayed in his true light, in those characteristics which led him to become Oliver Cromwell’s Dr. Goebbels.

And further, for the brilliant account of one of the most breath-taking 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, and the establishment of a republic, all of which assumes added significance in the light of today’s events.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Classics, 17th Century, Novels, 20th Century, Historical

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. Born in Wimbledon, he received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G.H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".

At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.

One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.

Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".

Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).

In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.

During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this book, word for word, had been written by Margaret Atwood and published in 1992, it would have two hundred thousand ratings and already be acclaimed as one of the great feminist novels of the twentieth century. It would have had all of Atwood's trademark wit, passion and irony, though her readers might have been slightly surprised to discover that she was also a talented historian who'd spent some time learning how to produce credible seventeenth century English. Unfortunately, since it was in fact written by Robert Graves and published in 1942, it has two hundred ratings and hardly anyone's even heard of it.

Yes, I know that sounds impossible. Check it out yourself if you don't believe me.

[Merna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've suddenly gained an obsession with 17th century England, so everything from the Puritans to Oliver Cromwell to the English civil war will hold my interest, no matter how boring it may seem to others. The wife to Mr. Milton will come off as boring for those with absolutely no interest of the events that took place in 17th century England, but for those who are interested then this is an absolutely fantastic read!

Graves undoubtedly did his research for this book. It's partially a history book detailing the events leading to the English civil war and the civil war itself. It's also a fictional reconstruction of Mary Powell's marriage to the famous English Poet, John Milton, who wrote the biblical epic Paradise lost. One of the great things about the fictional reconstruction of John Milton's tumultuous marriage is just how believable it comes off. The dialogue feels natural to that period. Not only that, but I'm extremely impressed with how well Robert Graves can get inside the mind of a female character, especially for man born in the Victorian era. I never felt like I was reading a female character written by a male author.

I'm not sure what to make of John Milton. Robert Graves disdains him and I can see why. He was quiet sexist. I mean he wrote things like: '...Who can be ignorant that women was created for man, and not man for women.' Of course, he was a man of his time and this type misogyny was the bedrock of Milton's society. But it's not only Milton's sexism that Robert Graves highlights. He also paints him as self-righteous, priggish, pedant, proud, polemicist and ambitious.

I did feel bad about his blindness, especially for a man who loved reading so much. Just as it wasn't a good time to be a women, neither was it a good time to be blind.

Many of his enemies wrote quite horrid things about him, saying his blindness was a punishment inflicted by god. But one shouldn't be too quick to feel pity for him, as he knew how to handle his enemies, and always had the best comebacks. One of his enemies was a man named Salmasius and there was great war of words between them. Milton had once wrote about him, saying:

"Do you indeed imagine that you are able to write any book of your own acceptable to posterity? Nay, fool, the coming age will wrap you in a bundle of your own futsy writings and consign you to oblivion: where you shall lie everlastingly, unless perhaps this late book of yours be taken up one day by readers so studious of my answers to it, that they are led to know the dust from its covers."

After Milton had thoroughly humiliated him, Salmasius tried to later argue that Milton's blindness was god's punishment.

But Milton had the final say and when Salasius died, Milton wrote: 'I will not impute to him his death as a crime, as he did to me my blindness."

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my view this is a seriously under-rated book. Robert Graves is writing from the POV of a 17th century young woman, describing the sights and sounds and historical events she would have known, and not a word jars. Some people object to the 'old-fashioned' English, and yet to my mind this is perfectly intelligible. Remember Graves was a scholar, writing about the 17th Century from a viewpoint in the middle 20th. He's hardly likely to use text speak is he?

Just consider the research that must have been necessary to produce this work. It must have been huge. Then Graves gets into the head of a young woman, successfully. How many male writers can do that? (Or for that matter, female writers the converse?)

Of course, if the book doesn't work for you, it doesn't. But to my mind it's possibly the most realistic fictional treatment of the English Civil War era ever written. If you know a better one *please* let me know, as I will be off to buy it.

[Daniela · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this 1942 book Robert Graves (of I, Claudius fame) tries hard to expose one of History’s greatest poets as one of England’s worst husbands. The result is an incredibly well-researched novel about Marie Powell, John Milton’s first wife.

The novel is told from Marie’s point of view in the form of a diary she keeps from everyone else, including her difficult husband. She marries John Milton as a teenage girl only because her father has mortgaged all their property and owes money to half of Oxford plus most of Wales. Marie is in love with someone else – a soldier fighting Charles I’s wars in Ireland and Scotland – but she is a dutiful daughter who loves her irresponsible father. The marriage takes place midway through the novel and it is a good 150 pages before Milton is introduced.

In the first part of the novel, we are given a glimpse into the life of the 17th century ruined gentry. Graves paints Marie’s family as having hidden but obvious papist tendencies. The first chapter (masterful, by the way) takes place during Christmas, a scene so colourful and loud it would send any staunch Puritan into a well-deserved coma. This sets the tone for the rest of the novel. Puritanism is the product of mindless fanaticism. Anything else, from Catholicism to Presbyterianism, is deemed better. Yet Graves struggles with Puritan Republicanism: how could these awful people, with their hatred of beauty and levity, engage with his beloved Romans in such a profound way? Milton, who visited and loved Italy, is an even deeper conundrum for Graves.

The ending is somewhat disappointing. We are left with a benign criticism of Charles I (historically, much more of a dunce), and a reluctant admiration for Oliver Cromwell. Graves’s dislike of Puritanism wins out. Milton who started off as a somewhat multidimensional character ends the novel abusing his wife, abandoning her family, and plagued by the same sexual insecurities he grappled with in the beginning. If Graves had it out for Milton, it is easy to see why he chose to focus on his first marriage. The couple separated briefly and Milton spent months writing pro-divorce treatises. Even Milton’s relationship with his and Marie’s daughters remained strained and, Graves argues, right down abusive.

As for Marie Powell, she too starts off as a compelling character who becomes less and less interesting, as though her marriage to Milton wilted something inside her. The book becomes overly meandering and even a little improbable. Graves put so much of his historical expertise into writing the book, but he seems to have forgotten that it was a novel. The last 100 pages read more as a Wikipedia page written in 17th century English rather than a set of events experienced and lived by real people.

[Monica]

From dappled shade:


Wife to Mr Milton is not a great book. Robert Graves apparently wrote the book to express his disgust with and disdain of John Milton - and to try to convince his readers to hold the same opinion.

Publishers also seem to think it's not a great book. I can guarantee that you will have a hard time finding a copy of Wife to Mr Milton (I stumbled across my 50-year-old copy by mistake in a Berkeley secondhand bookstore).

I am, though, on my third reading of this book. The reason I'm reading it yet again is because it has one of the most realistic and convincing heroines I have ever come across. Robert Graves has the rare talent of being able to write a character of the opposite sex convincingly (if you don't believe this is a rare talent, read a Victor Hugo or Jane Austen novel).

This book is a fictional reconstruction of Marie Powell's marriage to John Milton. Marie is wise, independent, passionate, petty and foolish by turns - but ultimately likable, and you can't help but feel sorry for her being encumbered by John Milton. It's written as an autobiography, based on a journal she kept from a year before her marriage until near her death while still a young woman.

One well-done scene is toward the beginning when, before her marriage, Marie falls sick and faints in the kitchen. Most of the household runs away because they are afraid that she has the plague. Her father hesitates in the doorway, torn between helping his daughter and protecting the rest of his family. If he catches the plague and dies then the rest of the family will end up in poverty. In the end, a servant helps Marie. Robert Graves neatly illustrates the conflict between compassion for the individual and the need to protect the family - and lays the groundwork for Marie being given away in marriage.

As with all of Robert Graves' books, there is a lot going on underneath the surface, which I must admit I only partially understand. Robert Graves' books usually have these undercurrents that fundamentally challenge traditional assumptions and the patriarchal society they're attached to.

If you want to read a great novel by Robert Graves, read I, Claudius. If you want to read a book which isn't great but that presents a completely convincing heroine and vividly portrays England before and during the Civil War, Wife to Mr Milton is a good choice.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a historical novel told in the voice of Mary (Marie) Powell (1625-1652) who married the English poet John Milton in 1641 when she was sixteen years old. She is portrayed in this novel as a clever and witty young woman who needed to come to terms with the onerous and boorish behavior of her husband.

John Milton was gifted with a talent for words in multiple languages, but on a personal level seemed incapable of listening and understand anything communicated to him. At least that was the case in the early days of his marriage to Mary. This novel explores the probable causes and feelings that led to their separation after a couple weeks of marriage when she returned to live in her parent's household. After three years of separation she returned to live with her husband and during the next seven years she bore four children (she died shortly after the fourth birth).

In addition to the relationship issues between Mary and her husband this story is complicated by the occurrence of the English Civil War during the time when Mary had returned to live with her parents. At first the lawlessness caused by the war was an excuse not to return to her husband. However, as civil order broke down her parents became destitute from lawless destruction of their property, and the need for safety became a reason for Mary to make amends and return to her husband.

Another strand of this novel is that Mary's true love was a young man closer to her age, Edmund Verney who was a soldier on the royalist side. This relationship is probably conjecture of the part of the author, but the main motivation for marrying John Milton is probably based on historical evidence that Mary's father hoped to be relieved of some financial debts through the marriage of his daughter to John Milton.

So in the end this novel provides the reader a portrayal of a loveless marriage, a glimpse of unconsummated love, and description of living through the English Civil War. Does that qualify the book for the romance genre?

I was originally attracted to this story because I have heard somewhere in the past that John Milton dictated Paradise Lost to his wife who functioned as a scribe by writing it down. I was disappointed to learn that Mary was the first of three wives of John Milton's, and if the dictation story is true it would need to be his third wife who was the scribe.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

from the other side of the college must read list - graves is just the writer to make us feel the pain - all of graves' historical novels are pure pleasure (for me - anyway).

[Anna Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll preface this by saying this wasn’t an easy read. It’s quite dense and there’s a lot of detail about the English Civil War that was probably lost on me. However it’s easily some of the best historical fiction I’ve read. It’s made up of the fictional diaries of Milton’s first wife who is a really captivating narrator and character. Her teenage zest for life is so engaging, and it compounds the drudgery and misery that comes for her as she grows up. The less said about Milton the better I think - I actively despised him throughout. I found the descriptions of her first living with him quite upsetting. But learning about who he became to Cromwell and following the development of the civil war was fascinating.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The wife of the title is Marie Powell. Mr. Milton is John Milton, author of Paradise Lost. You may see her elsewhere as Mary Powell Milton, for upon their marriage in 1642 John Milton forbade her and others to call her with the French "Marie". That itself should give you a glimpse of what this loveless marriage was like.

The novel opens on Marie's 15th birthday when her father has given her a diary. The novel is then told in the first person as if taken from this diary and gives us a glimpse of her life both before and during her marriage to Milton. Robert Graves uses the language of the 17th Century, but, as he says "without the 17th Century spelling." While it took more than a few pages to adjust to this 350 year old writing style, I think it contributed to the story in a positive way. I did wonder a time or two would I have appreciated its being written in more modern language and in the third person. Maybe someone has written one.

If this were just the marriage that would have been interesting enough. It is also the time of the English Civil War when Charles I was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell came to power. Would the marriage have been so turbulent had the time been more peaceful? I have never been especially interested in British history and know little. I know a speck more now and maybe has me willing to explore other novels of its 16th and 17th Centuries. Time will tell.

I thought there was too much about Milton's writing. Maybe a novel about the wife would have been insignificant without the life of the husband. Certainly Milton would have thought so. Well, maybe a novel of around 300 pages would have been more palatable. I loved sections and was completely unimpressed with others. I guess that makes this 3-stars.

[Numidica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Graves clearly did not like Milton. Very good historical fiction.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Graves has a pretty great idea to tell the story of the English Civil War from the point of view of Mary Powell, the first wife of John Milton (yes, that John Milton). Mary narrates her own story, and she is pretty damn hilarious - smart and funny, and running rings around her husband, whom Graves deliriously depicts as a sanctimonious prick. Unfortunately, Graves really wants us to know how much historical research he has done, so Mary narrates the minutiae of the Civil War and great length. This really slowed the book down for me, but I kept with it because of Mary's bold and witty voice.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4 and a half stars)

This was published exactly three centuries after the English Civil Wars began, and yet it manages to transport you back to the time as if it were yesterday. You can sense the monumental amount of research behind this book. Everything from the makeup of seventeenth-century armies, the uncertainty of the months leading up to total war, to the daily lives and superstitions of Marie Powell and her family, and the heavy religiousness that seems so alien nowadays, but was a fact of life in the 1640s; it all feels real and thorough.

Marie is such a multi-faceted protagonist, too. Graves writes her as intelligent, thoughtful impulsive, naïve, yearning, and ultimately too young for the world that her father forces her into thanks to his various debts. Through her eyes you see what the seventeenth century might have been like, how scary it must have been.

Graves' clear hatred of John Milton as a person, as well as his begrudging respect for Milton's literary works, also shines through the text. Milton comes off as the epitome of the self-obsessed, heavily misogynistic, incredibly talented men who are littered throughout history.

The most interesting element of this book, though, is how clearly it is a twentieth-century book -- specifically one written when the Second World War and facism were at their peaks. Graves cleverly turns this sixteenth century story about marriage and civil war into a commentary on twentieth century right wing beliefs. Milton could just as well read as a Nazi collaborator as he does a Puritan one. England's slip into authoritarianism in the 1650s translates perfectly as a conjectural look into the slip into facism that people feared if Britain lost the war.

That is where the main issue with the book lies. Graves appears to believe that the familiar evil of British imperialism is preferable to the uncertainty and chaos of the far-right. It makes sense that he feels this way, but this antiquated, British style of thinking does blunt the message of the book a little.

[Jane Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should be more well- known and widely read as it's a remarkable portrayal of Marie Powell, John Milton's first wife, which seems like a precursor to the reimaginings of the lives of over-looked women à la Wifedom of Anna Funder. As other reviewers here have noted, it's particularly note-worthy that a man born in the Victorian era and writing in the mid 1940s wished, and was able, to create such a sympathetic and nuanced female character as Graves's Marie.
Overall, the book is witty, brilliantly researched and revelatory about patriarchal family/marriage/societal norms of the mid 17thC, and deserves an audience.
The character of Marie is appealing, full of fun, has a zest for life, and a sharp, acerbic turn of phrase when it comes to the stuffy, self-absorbed and even spiteful Milton, from whom she was estranged for 3 years shortly after their marriage.
For me, the mystery of the book is why Graves wrote it, why in 1942, and what did he have against Milton?
The first 2 thirds of the book are the best and most focused on Marie, as Graves does spend a lot of time recounting the academic battles between Milton and his contemporaries in somewhat overwhelming detail towards the end. Interesting, but seemingly from a different book!
The English Civil War, the religious and political rivalries and the effects of all of these on families like the Powells, are more or less integrated into Marie's story, with a few lengthy digressions.
I really enjoyed this unusual book, despite a few caveats, and found it to be a gripping page turner in many sections. The appendix of the lists of property held, (or not, as he was a serial double mortgager) by Marie's father at his death was a fascinating insight into how Graves could have used these lists of property, from sheep to tankards to green carpets to blankets, as a basis for his richly imagined recreation of lives in the 1640s.

[Bowsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoy the precision and historical detail of Graves's prose and it can't be helped that the historical facts of this story make the ending a bit dreary. The book shed light and life onto an era of British history that for me had previously been just a jumble of dates and place names. Marie is a lively lass, and through her character I was able to see the grim Protestant countenance of the man she married; Graves' telling grants depth and a window of understanding to the Reformation, a period of historical violence and confusion unfathomable to this 21st-century American reader.

[Herb Hastings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read but worth the effort. Graves writes this book in the first person. The narrator is a 17th century woman and Graves gives a believable rendition of her voice. His characterization of John Milton as a humorless, cruel, self important blowhard is a surprise to one who only knows him through his poetry, but rings true. This work is not as well known as the author's I,Claudius, but is worthy of a place next to it on your bookshelves.

[Sidney אוֹר · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Graves writing is incomparable. Graves, reminiscent of todays Eric Larson's nonfiction, can authentically recreate the milieux he writes of. Far beyond the ken of those unfortunates who were schooled in the US public school system from the 1980s onward. I pity those people, for never being able to experience the sense-of-place of such as Graves provides. A generation+ has been robbed, pure and simple.

[Pamela Bronson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable, tragic, makes me dislike Milton even more than I did before reading it, but since it's by Graves, you can't trust any of it.

[Esdaile · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was studying Paradise Lost for my A levels back in 1971 our teacher recommended that we buy and read Wife to Mr Milton. He was very enthusiastic about the book and suggested that it would be a helpful complement to our studies. Of course not even the keenest of us would have run the risk of being outed as the ultimate "goody goody" for doing any such thing. We had enough reading material on our plate, and besides the teacher was expecting us to buy the book ourselves. I think he was very disappointed that nobody acted on his recommendation. In general we did not think much of him as a teacher. He had a number of personality problems and was not, I suspect, a very happy man. In retrospect, I think he was a better teacher than we gave him credit for and I am deeply grateful to him for introducing me to the world of Chaucer and Milton.

This year 2022 I was browsing in the last original Charing Cross Road properly speaking Second Hand bookshop (in his memoir preface to the Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, Edward Marsh mentions eight) what should I find but a 1968 Penguin edition of Wife to Mr Milton. Buying it felt like paying off a very old debt. I realised that not having read it disappointed my long departed teacher.

Wife to Mr Milton is an excellent read. Robert Graves with a remarkable leap of imagination has placed himself in the skin of Marie Powell, John Milton's first wife, whom he married when she was just sixteen years old. Of course it is difficult for a reader in 2022 to pronounce judgement on the authenticity of the language, but it certainly did not strike me as forced or unnatural and there is a glossary of archaic terms at the end which could profitably have been a bit longer. I read somewhere that nobody has been able to correct Graves on points of historical accuracy. The achievement of this fast moving but highly intelligent romantic biographical historical account (recalling to my mind the similarly romantic biographical Gone with he Wind) is to have maintained authenticity, that is to say realism, while allowing us to associate with the characters.

John Milton does not emerge from this account with great credit. Fanatical, excessively fastidious, selfish, hypocritical, exceedingly misogynistic, offensively pedantic and dogmatic, mean in money and in spirit, puffed up with a fantastic conceit, possessive and parsimonious in the extreme, in fact cranky to the point of being we would say in today's language and by today's standards "borderline certifiable", the reader might wonder if this could be the poet who gave the English speaking world Comus, Samson Agonistes and Paradise Lost. Well maybe it is possible; after all, those works shows no indulgence towards womankind!

On the other hand, the reader may reasonably ask, if this account written by Robert Graves in the name of Milton's wife, is disinterested. Firstly, does Robert Graves have a bias? I have no idea what his views towards Milton were but he could certainly be dismissive of other poets. He was contemptuous of WH Auden for example. The possibility of bias does not stop with Robert Graves. For how unbiased is Marie Powell in her account? She seems a very reasonable woman who selflessly sacrificed her happiness for her father's sake to tie the knot with a pedantic monster, but there are two sides to every story. Graves offers a hint that there may be indeed another story to tell when we ponder over Marie's sometimes convenient headaches and time of the month to keep her amorous husband at bay. This adds a further layer of interest to the book. How truthful an account if Marie Powell's? Did she write it secretly and only for herself or did she harbour a wish perhaps not even admitted to herself, that it should eventually find the light of day?

Wife to Mr Milton is a very sad story, even sadder than even I expected. I leave it to the reader to discover for him/herself what I mean by that. There remains nothing else for me to do than to recommend this book to Goodreads readers just as my teacher recommended this book to his A level class.

I am glad after a very long time to have done what my teacher suggested - pick up and read Wife to Mr Milton.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

“For the power to put apt speeches in the mouth of women is necessary for the complete poet.”

Marie Milton, the Wife to Mr. Milton, who is telling us her story makes this observation, talking about the Greek poet Tiresias, who had the privilege of having been transformed to a woman once, and so had a natural advantage. But doubtless, the real writer of this book, Robert Graves, after having viewed the world through the eyes of a Roman Emperor, thought it might be a nice challenge to talk about life during the English Civil war from the perspective of a young woman married to one of the giants of Literature.

How well does he succeed? I do not really know. The book is surly impressive, but also not really gripping. So Marie falls in love with a handsome soldier but is more or less forced to marry Milton because her father is heavily indebted. The marriage is not a happy one. She even leaves her husband shortly after the marriage – still a virgin. Or she lets his husband abandon her. But she does come back eventually and gives birth to four children. The last one, as she is well aware, and as her husband knew, would bring her death.

The novel reads like it were written in the 17th century (at least to this non-native reader). And it is not an easy read. When she had agreed to marry the much older man they meet to get to know each other. But her brother is with them and talks to Milton about the relative merits of a couple of Latin writers. You have to be a real intellectual to be able to absorb some kind of pleasure out of this discussion. And Milton talks a lot about a play he plans to write Adam unparadised which would much later come to life as Paradise Lost. Milton, we assume, was not the nicest guy, renaming his wife Mary for example. But I am not sure that I am too fond of sweet Marie.

Milton becomes blind working too hard, for example when writing the pamphlet explaining why King Charles was a traitor and had to be put to death. Mary is present at the execution. But it seems, or Graves wants us to believe, that it was the blindness that made him able to write the poem that ensured his immortality.

(I did not know much about Milton except for his On His Blindness, and that mainly because it is the subject of one of Asimov’s short stories. But I have always been struck by something Wittgenstein once said. We can only be sure of the genius of Shakespeare because we have the testimony of Milton, because he was certainly incorruptible).

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not a great fan of Robert Graves: there is something too professorial about him, too dry. He seems bent on turning gold into lead, making dull books of interesting subject matter. Here we have the story of John Milton's wife, how she was in love with a gambling cavalier, but came to be married to a cold, erudite parliamentarian with borrowed coat-of-arms.
The narrative voice, as with I, Claudius, is convincing; Graves leaves aside archaic spelling but otherwise includes much period language. This is pleasing enough, though one wonders if part of his success is in choosing characters so remote from the reader's experience as to make the verisimilitude difficult to quibble over. Moreover, it is meagre compensation for the lack of dramatic engagement; events are relayed with journalistic detachment. Scenes never feel like living, inhabitable things, but rather posthumous retellings, performed reluctantly as by a haughty waiter.
Perhaps this is to mistake Graves' intentions: he does not mean to create gripping, pulp historical novels. But then, what is he doing? John Milton is an interesting historical figure, being a great poet caught up in turbulent political events; yet we mostly see him at home, being cruel to his wife, who is sympathetic but ultimately insipid. Again, there are some amusing period details: such as that Milton would use astrology to calculate his wife's periods of fecundity, and only then have sex with her according to the position of the planets. Also when Milton speaks of poetry, usually to denigrate his contemporaries. But these are passing moments in a book otherwise dominated by miasmic financial woes, at times recalling the tedious rump of Balzac's Illusions Perdues. A lively history book, or biography, would have done much better.

[Gille Liath · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's surprising in a way that this hasn't been picked up by some TV producer, because it's exactly the sort of thing they are looking for these days: a revisionist tale of a great man from history, in which it turns out that actually his wife/girlfriend/Mum was abler/more interesting/the real talent. But maybe people don't know these days who Milton - a name second in English poetry only to Shakespeare - is.

Graves clearly took against the man, more than can be explained by simply not liking his poetry. He said that Paradise Lost is 'overpowering' but, he asked rhetorically, 'is it the job of poetry to overpower'? And in fact he decided that epic poetry is not poetry at all (how then does it manage to overpower?). Certainly from what is known of his life, and his prose writings, Milton was an unattractive character; it is not implausible to make him a stuffy prig, a narcissist and a misogynist. On the other hand, women like Marie, pert, smart, sarcastic, self-possessed - in a word, that awful modern word, 'feisty' - are much more common in fiction than in real life. Here she gets all the good lines, and he's just an appalling boor. But he's still the boor that wrote Paradise Lost.

The book is full of irrelevant passages about contemporary history (the era of the civil wars) and customs. Graves' books are always well researched, and many of these nuggets are interesting in themselves, so if you just wanted a picture of life in the period you could do a lot worse; but from the point of the view of the story these are ill-judged digressions. It would have been better at about half the length.

[Elsbeth Kwant]

What a fascinating book. I had never given much thought to the personal life of the author of Paradise Lost. But this story, told from the perspective of his wife presents him as a most unlikable character. Set in the context of the Civil War, Marie Powell, the daughter of a Cavalier, is given to Mr. Milton in extenuation of a bad debt. He is incredibly self-centered, renaming his wife and almost deliberately misunderstanding her. Graves apparently hated Milton and this book communicates this dislike very credibly, but not in a moaning way. Enjoyed it, though a trifle heavy-going at times.

[Alan Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful book on the ways of 17th century life as told by Maria who unfortunately is wed to John Milton( A biblical maniac ) the literary Giant of paradise Lost and paradise regained....Robert Graves apparently wrote the book to express his disgust with and disdain of John Milton he certainly successfully achieves that with hilarious prose and a profound zest in a time of civil war and religious fanaticism and when women we're classed as mere receptacles of accouchement.


Highly recommended.

[Wendy Dodds · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marie is a saucy wee lass who is fun to spend time with. However Graves sometimes gets bogged down in pontificating. While the learned discussions are interesting as a guide to the turmoil of the times, they carry on for too long for my taste. That said, the book certainly increased my understanding of this time in English history and so was worth the effort.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Czytanie tej książki cały czas przyzywało na myśl echa Dumasa, aczkolwiek bez genialnych intryg tego ostatniego. Pomimo to, oceniam tę książkę pozytywnie. Była ona na dobrą sprawę bardzo smutna.

[T.]

From Peter Hitchens: https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co....

[Jerome Baladad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually difficult to read mainly because it uses so much of the old English language style in its narrative. If you're not familiar with the style, try reading any of Shakespeare's works for you to get an idea. And you need to be quite well read to be able to swim through its pages without consulting the dictionary. But just the same, the book's worth reading as it gives you a fair introduction to English history, especially those about Cromwell, Milton, the regicides (what a word!) and the restoration period during 16th century. I'm intrigued to do more research on what actually took place during those periods --- can you imagine England with its own civil wars and without its well-known monarchy? The protagonist was portrayed to have seen an English king being beheaded, which chapter to me was most intriguing.

One thing that's a bit annoying about this book is its extensive use of unconventional spellings, which I believe during that period is not considered valuable and not followed. There are simply so many different spellings for words that you are sure you've been using for so long but have not thought of being spelled differently.

It's a must reading for women to get an idea of how women were being treated during the periods covered in this book. Women would certainly not want being relegated to the background, just like the very talented wife of Mr. Milton eventually played to her advantage. I'm also fascinated by Robert Graves' narrative use of the works involving mysticism (,e.g., how a woman's child would look like her beloved rather than her actual husband - check this out here!). I'm also tempted to check out Milton's works just to get an idea of his greatness (or the opposite) as a writer.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly not as good as the Claudius books by Graves, but still a very interesting read. It is nice to have a view of Milton from a very human view point. The narrative does use an archaic syntax which can feel a little jarring at times, but it also helps create the illusion that you are reading a genuine historical document. Evidently this was a popular style for Graves as it essentially the same style used in I Claudius/Claudius the God. The characters as rather difficult to like, but do feel genuine and very human. I think from reading reviews here, that this is a misunderstood book, but one that I am glad I have read.

[Jim Krotzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the book boring and difficult to read because of the language used, that of the 1600s. John Milton was a difficult man to get a long with. Milton was an ill-tempered, bitter, superstitious, misogynous, vengeful although intelligent man.He didn't listen to others; he thought he was always right.
The novel is written in the first person with his wife Marie as narrator. She marries Milton because her father is in debt. She does not love Milton but instead loves a man called Mun. If Milton were a more likeable character, the book may have been easier to read. It is written by the same author that wrote I, Claudius, a very important book and TV serial on PBS.

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably the only book I've ever read by Robert Graves that I did not very much enjoy. Perhaps it was because of my ignorance about the private life of John Milton. Unfortunately for Graves, this opinion was general. The book was not a success.