Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall 1783 - 1787

In 1783, Ross Poldark, the title character to the opening volume (published in 1945) of the magnificent Poldark series, the great undertaking of Cornish writer Winston Graham's ninety-three-year life, is first introduced to us as a young man in his early twenties, a de-commissioned infantry officer, recently returned from the brutality of the War of Rebellion in Colonial America. Given up for dead and in fact wounded almost to the point of death, Poldark returns to his native Cornwall, a scarred, limping figure, still spirited but aged and hardened by the horrors of war. Grimly, the adventurous risk-taker Poldark discovers his father, the local squire and something of a lothario, is dead, his fiancée, Elizabeth, believing Ross killed in combat, is now engaged to wed Ross' cousin, Francis, and that an ambitious family of rising commercial entrepreneurs, the Warleggans, are in the process of trying to persuade Ross's uncle to sell them the mines that would have been Ross's has his father's will been penned without the apparent tragedy of his son's death foremost in his mind. The story spreads like the branches of a massive tree and before the conclusion of this, volume one, we come to meet the sort of characters that will never be forgotten, and find ourselves witness to scenes and situations that stir the imagination. What separates the dozen Poldark novels from so many other historical works is firstly the intricate, good-natured, involving plotline Graham sustained throughout the sixty years he was writing about these characters, but above that, there is within each Poldark work a sense that one is entering a past time, not merely reading of it. Life as Graham writes in any of these books is a near three-dimensional voyage two hundred years backward, and he leaves few stones unturned. When one reads these novels one learns about the mining industry of the era, the banking industry, social customs, warfare, and contemporary attitudes on an encyclopedic range of subjects. One witnesses the rise of Methodism, and grasps its role as an outlet to quell ill-will among the English lower classes, as nothing did among the violent-minded masses of 1780's France. Graham tells us what people in those times wore, ate, drank, what they would have felt, witnessed, heard, smelled, thought, and feared. He takes a modern person into what might very well be described as a psychological/sociological time machine. These books boil with the gamut of human emotion and passion, from hate to lust, to love, to desire for all manner of possessions. Ross Poldark and the eleven other novels that follow it are storytelling at its old-fashioned greatest, and this book launches what I truly feel is the greatest historical saga in the English language.

I just finished reading this book. I have read several others in this series and highly recommend them. I think this and the other Poldark books are some of the best historical novels I have read in years.!! Winston Graham writes so well of life in 1780's Cornwall.Ross Poldark, our hero, has just returend to his family home after 2 years fighting in the Revolutionary war, and is hoping for a reunion with the woman he loves. The author describes every detail of life as if he had lived in those times. One becomes very involved with the characters.One constant theme in this book is the contrast between the desperately poor common people and the gentry. Ross Poldark is a gentleman who is unusual for his concern with the wellbeing of the "lower classes."You probably won't want to stop with just this book. I'm very glad to hear that these are finally being reprinted in the U.S.