Wife to Mr. Milton

by Robert Graves

Wife to Mr. Milton is Robert Graves’s imagining of the life of Mary Powell, John Milton’s first wife. She has no interest in him whatsoever but is forced to marry him to pay off a debt of her father’s, whom she adores. It’s vintage Robert Graves, a main character you end up liking immensely, with a backdrop of events that leaves you much better informed about the history because you feel you’ve lived through it. In this case, the setting is Oxford (and some London) during the English civil war. There’s even a glossary of 17th-century words at the back, so you know a ‘blind buzzard’ is a wilfully ignorant person and a ‘Turk’s cap’ a tulip.