Wife to Mr. Milton

Milton is exposed in this novel as a prize prig. Written in the form of a memoir of his first wife, Marie Powell, who was steam-rolled into marrying him.
Graves manages to include a concise historical narrative of the Civil War that is neither too complicated nor outside the plot and development of the story.
However, Milton remains in the memory as the over-bearing, self-righteous Puritan, never slow to advance his own interests and mean to others.

I quite enjoy Graves' fiction, and he has gotten wholly into the character of Milton's first wife as the first-person narrator of her "autobiography" -- a first-rate biography in its own right, but given more weight in the fictionalized version.
Marie Powell Milton was not exactly a prominent heroine of the age.
Milton himself comes off poorly, being a large ego in a shabby personality, but has some redeeming qualities occasionally.

Although in the end I found the book too long, there is much to enjoy int it. Graves could blend in historical details into the narrative in such a way that even if you lost interest in the main characters you can still find plenty to interest you in his evocation of the period. In the opening chapter Marie Powell describes a 12th Night party at her parents home. It was news to me that such things happened and reading about it was fun. I was alos surprised to learn that in the 17th century people were familiar with galangal.

The language used in this book was a bit dated and stuffy, so it was a slow read at times. There was a lot of information that was interesting from a historical standpoint, despite the dated language that was used.