From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 22:48:38 +1000
Subject: Book Review - Wife to Mr. Milton

     title: Wife to Mr. Milton
        by: Robert Graves
 publisher: Noonday 1962 [1944]
  subjects: historical fiction, England, poetry
     other: 378 pages

_Wife to Mr. Milton_ is the only one of Graves' novels with a
female protagonist; it presents itself as a journal kept by Milton's
first wife, Marie Powell.  It is also a more personal novel than his
others, with most of the dramatic political and military events of the
English civil war recounted second-hand (though we get a close-up of
the execution of Charles), but it doesn't depend on these to such an
extent that this weakens it.  Its strongest point is its depiction
of everyday (middle-class) life during the period and its portrait
of Milton.  (Graves, as a poet and a student of poetry as well as
a novelist, is perhaps unusually qualified to tackle the subject.)
While _Wife to Mr. Milton_ will not appeal to as wide an audience as
_I, Claudius_, it is definitely worth a look.

--

%T	Wife to Mr. Milton
%A	Robert Graves
%I	Noonday
%C	New York
%D	1962 [1944]
%O	paperback
%P	viii,378pp
%K	historical fiction, England, poetry

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
20 June 1995

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