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Wife to Mr. Milton: The Story of Marie Powell

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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.

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.