Wife to Mr. Milton: The Story of Marie Powell [Hardcover]

Robert Graves (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1979 | ISBN-10: 0374932409 | ISBN-13: 978-0374932404

Marie Powell married John Milton in payment of a debt. It was a mismatching of bitter ineptitude, for in temperament and conviction they were worlds apart. Their marriage is the focus of this novel. The author also wrote "Goodbye To All That", "I, Claudius" and "Claudius, the God".

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 380 pages
• Publisher: Octagon Books (June 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374932409
• ISBN-13: 978-0374932404
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,877,136 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBERT GRAVES (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. After the war, he was granted a classical scholarship at Oxford and subsequently went to Egypt as the first professor of English at the University of Cairo. He is most noted for his series of novels about the Roman emperor Claudius and his works on mythology, such as The White Goddess.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great find..., April 21, 2006

By 

Rashchupkina (Off left in center.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Wife to Mr. Milton: The Story of Marie Powell (Mass Market Paperback)

I happened upon this book in a library sale, and so glad I picked it up! The prose in this book is astoundingly gorgeous....poetry.

The details of everyday life in the period are vast, it's all intertwined in a bitter marriage and life of John Milton...told through his wife who was forced into marriage with him at 16...2 temperments so unsuited to one another. She loved another.

You'll love this gem of a book. I am surprised it is not more well known.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a modern poet's view of the 'sublime' poet of the 'late rebellion', July 17, 2007

By 

johnnybird (Tousanne Arizona) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

Wife to Mr. Milton: The Story of Marie Powell by Robert Graves (New York: Creative Age Press, Inc., 1944) 380pp.

Contents

Foreword

I. The Last Day of Christmas, 1641

II. An Alarm of the Plague

III. A Sight of Royalty, and of Another

IV. Life at Forest Hill

V. Mun Becomes a Soldier

VI. I Fall Into Piety and Out Again

VII. A Strange Tale of Sympathy

VIII. I Fall Into Disgrace

IX. An Account of Mr. John Milton

X. I Agree to Marriage

XI. Mr. Milton's Courtship

XII. My Marriage

XIII. I Am Taken to London

XIV. I Say Farewell to My Family

XV. I Come Back to Forest Hill

XVI. The Beginning of the War

XVII. My Husband Sends for Me

XVIII. I Am Persuaded to Return to My Husband

XIX. I Am Got With Child; and My Father is Ruined

XX. My Child is Born; and My Father Dies

XXI. I Speak With Mun Again

XXII. I Watch the King's Execution

XXIII. Evil News from Ireland

XXIV. My Husband Buys Fame at a High Price

Epilogue

Appendix

Glossary

Also by Robert Graves

Fiction

I, Claudius

Claudius the God

The Antigua Stamp

Count Belisarius

Sergeant Lamb's America

Non-Fiction

Goodbye to All That

T. E. Lawrence to His Biographers (With B. H. Liddell Hart)

Jacket copy of the first American edition, a Wartime Book, of 1944 :

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.

This 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.

Robert Graves needs no particular introduction to the American reading public, for at one stroke, his brilliantly successful novel, I, CLAUDIUS, established him as one of the outstanding historical novelists of our time. Graves was born in London in 1895, the son of Alfred Percival Graves, the poet. In his early years, he probably reaped more knowledge from his father's extensive library than from the six prep schools to which he was sent prior to his entering the famous Charterhouse. The First World War caused him to set aside the idea of going to Oxford. He promptly applied for, and obtained, a commission in a Welsh regiment, in which he served until he was wounded in 1917, when he was sent to Oxford to convalesce. Siegfried Sassoon was a fellow officer of his, and it was at that time that Graves brought out his first book of verse. At Oxford, he was married to Nancy Nicholson, and, owing to serious financial difficulties, he was not able to graduate from St. John's College until 1926. After Oxford, Robert Graves went to Egypt, where he was a professor at the University of Cairo. He next resided in Majorca, where he conducted the Seizin Press with Laura Riding, until the Spanish civil war brought an end to his activities there. In addition to several volumes of verse, Graves is the author of such other successes as COUNT BELISARIUS and SERGEANT LAMB'S AMERICA, and his autobiography, GOODBYE TO ALL THAT, with its inevitable sequel, BUT IT STILL GOES ON.

From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens:

'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, 'when King Charles the First had his head cut off?'

I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.

'Well,' returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. 'So the books say; but I don't see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?'

I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information on this point.

...I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.

'What do you think of that for a kite?' he said.

I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been as much as seven feet high.

'I made it. We'll go and fly it, you and I,' said Mr. Dick. 'Do you see this?'

He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First's head again, in one or two places.