"A thumping good read." --E.M. Forster

At the age of sixteen, Mary Powell marries poet John Milton. Their marriage, which plays out during the English 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, and the establishment of a republic.