Poldark series; Ross, Demelza, Jeremy and Warleggan by Winston GrahamAddictive! This is the word to describe what happens when you start reading the first book in thisseries. Winston Graham has written historical fiction at its best. Cornwall in the end of the 18th century, where people are mainly depending on the tin and copper mines.The story starts when Ross, a young man from the higher classes, but without money, comes back after having fought in the American wars. Being rather disillusioned by his experience, he is on his way home. Already in the stage coach he gets news that his father has died. Deciding at the spur of the moment, not to go directly home, but visit his uncle to inquire more about the circumstances, he get his second chock when he learns that his first love, Elizabeth, is to marry his cousin Francis. With these devastating news he goes back to his house, Nampara, where he grew up. It is in an appalling state, and no money to take care of it. However, he is determined to take it back to how it once was. The other part of his inheritance is a couple of mines, where his father already had given up on finding anything. His prospects does not look that good.I don’t want to reveal too much for you, who are still happy enough, to have the enjoyment of reading the books ahead of you. It is a family saga of the Poldark family, and the people surrounding them. It is a tale of family, love and betrayal, the rich and the poor, the mining business which seemed to have thrived during the time, but now in decline, the miners and their miserable life, but with highlights at times, the people making money on banks and businesses, not always fair, the unrest in France, the smugglers of the Cornwall coast and much more. They just go about their daily life, but Winston Graham has managed to make it into a very exciting and eventful time.How did he manage? Mainly, I would say, in the narrative. It is written in a cool, almost neutral kind of way, but he still manages to put sparkles on the pages. He tells the story of a number of different kinds of people in a very inspiring way. He lets their life be shadowed by real life events, but otherwise you have the feeling that this is the world as it exists. It is highlighted in all the things that is happening with the mines, the village, the workers, the family situations and is woven into a beautiful ‘piece of cloth’. The other remarkable thing is the characters he has created. They overtake everything, especially the main characters Ross and Demelza. Even when the story is told with other actors, their characters are lingering over the story. Apart from that, you have the people working in Nampara, Ross’ cousin Francis and his wife Elizabeth, George Warleggan, a newly rich banker who is also in love with Elizabeth, other countryside gentry, the miners and people in the village. After four books they are all you friends. Hmm, maybe not all of them!Just a few notes on the main characters, which hopefully will not destroy it for anyone else. Ross is a fantastic romantic character. Strong willed, making friends over the class borders, a natural, thinking of other people (most of the time). He is sometimes a little bit too emotional and lets his anger take the better of him, which puts him in difficult situations. There are times when you don’t like him so much, but he always manage to justify the means in the end.Demelza is another fantastic character moulded out of a miner’s daughter and coming to Nampara by coincidence. She is the one who makes the longest ‘journey’ over the class borders, and has enough power to overcome the obstacles. Slowly, slowly, she works herself into the confidence of people and they very soon realise, that when she is not there, they miss her.Francis, is a good natured boy, too kind, too easy to lure into a wrong path. Getting disappointed in his marriage rather early, he starts playing and loosing his money. He always have a minority complex towards Ross.Elizabeth is beautiful and sensitive. Like a beautiful flower who is there to get admiring looks from men, but will bend with the first wind. It is difficult to understand what the men see in her, but maybe this was the ideal at the time. She is the one most difficult to get a grasp of.Winston Graham wrote many books, and being so impressed by the way he tells a story, I think it is a must to try some of the rest. The first four books in the Poldark series were written in the fifties. It was only twenty years later, that he continued with the other eight(!) books. I only bought the first four, but I have to admit that I just have to read the others as well. Cannot leave this story without knowing how it will be developed. However, since I tend to get so captivated by the books, and have a lot of other books to read, I will not yet buy the rest! I hope you realise how disciplined I am in this venture?I have some favourite books when it comes to strong stories and characters. Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Scarlett and Rhett in Gone With the Wind, and Claire and Jamie in the Outlander series. To this list I can now add Ross and Demelza. He also wrote Marnie which was a successful Hitchcock film with Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren.From my blog: thecontentreader.blogspot.com
At first I was a bit flummoxed when trying to think of a book to fit the optional Classic Historical Fiction category of the “2014 Back to the Classics Challenge” hosted by Karen at http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogsp... . A Tale of Two Cities leaps to mind, but I had already read that and my own particular mini- challenge within the challenge was to complete the 2014 Back to the Classics Challenge with books from my shelves and/or my TBR if possible. But then I thought of this series. The Classics Challenge rule is that the books must be published at the earliest prior to 1964 and one of my personal projects is to read the entire Poldark Saga, so lucky me when I discovered that Jeremy Poldark was first published in 1950 and could qualify! The Poldark Saga is set in Cornwall in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. The Poldarks are gentlemen farmers and mine owners, but at the time of this third entry in the series, they have fallen on hard times. Cousins Francis Poldark and Ross Poldark are estranged from one another, both are on the edge of bankruptcy and Ross and his wife Demelza are still suffering from the aftermath of the previous book’s tragedy. As the book opens Ross faces the death penalty or transportation for his alleged activities during the salvage of two shipwrecks which also occurred in the previous book. The first half of Jeremy Poldark, which mainly deals with Ross’ trial and his wife’s efforts to save him, were absolutely gripping. It is easy to see why the series was televised. The second part isn’t quite as fast paced, and there was a little bit of a love triangle twaddle that bored me, but on the whole it was satisfying. There is also a nice little side story that runs throughout the book between the doctor, Dwight Enys and a high strung, yet wickedly intelligent Caroline Penvenen which might turn out well, but maybe not. Also the reader is introduced to Ross’ cousin and Francis’ sister Verity’s step children and I really hope that later books explore their potentially fraught relationship with their new stepmother.What I like about these books is that they are fairly unvarnished historical fiction; I haven’t thus far encountered any anachronism that has annoyed me in the past with other books. Life is difficult and often brutal for the people living in Cornwall at this time. Their society is classist, racist, sexist and generally unfair, in particular for the lower classes and for anyone who tries to go against the grain. Graham more or less tells it like it was, warts and all. Certainly Ross is somewhat idealized (and possibly a proxy for the author), his motives are usually fairly sound even if his actions often get him into trouble, in particular with other members of his class. He is also his own worst enemy and would do better to occasionally listen to Demelza’s advice. But then that wouldn’t make for such a dramatic story, now wouldn’t it?
What do You think about Jeremy Poldark (1996)?
Jeremy Poldark was significantly shorter than the previous two Poldark novels, but not short on adventure! There was a surprising bit of action throughout, and I think it will be so much fun to see it translated on screen for the second series of the BBC adaptation! I enjoyed this book, and Demelza, equally as the first novel, Ross Poldark. Read my review of the first book here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....Additionally, I felt the first three books could easily be read as a standalone trilogy. Jeremy Poldark acts as a closure to many storylines and the ending is very hopeful. It gives the reader a sense of closure and that the characters will go on living "happily-for-now". Book four, Warleggan, has a distinctly darker theme and foreshadowing that was hard for me to delve into. I'll always cherish the first three novels as an unbroken arc and anything beyond that will read as extraneous to me.
—Amanda
This book is third one of twelve Cornwall series has been written by English writer Winston Graham. Very engaging story. In this book we find distance between Ross and Demelza. They lost their daughter "Julia", Ross near to be bankrupt and his relationship between him and Francis is so dark. All of these make Ross and Demelza estrange together. After I read the fourth novel of these series I find Graham in this volume prepared us to the happening in the future between Ross, Demelza and Elizabeth. Of course Jeremy is the name of the Ross and Demelza' son who birth in this book. In this volume we read about Francis who wanted to suicide but it is unsuccessful. Of course as I wrote in my review of previous volume "Demelza" my favorite character in all these series is her. She is fascinating. We read in this book how she is a powerful woman and she is a perfect mate for her husband. She is so resilient and hopeful person and try to save her husband and give him hope.
—Zari
It has been a long while since I've read a novel which has both excited and dazzled me in the way that this one has. As a writer, Winston Graham paints pictures with prose the way Michelangelo did with his palette. Not a word is wasted, evoking images of the windswept landscape of Southwest England abutting the ocean sea that is Cornwall, dotted here and there with a smattering of landed estates, villages, inns, mines, coves, and houses of varying kinds.It is August 1790 and Ross Poldark finds himself on trial at the Bodmin Assizes for his life, accused of formenting a riot and encouraging the theft of the King's properties from the wrecks of 2 ships that ran aground near his property the previous January. George Warleggan, a business rival and enemy, in the process of building and consolidating a growing wealth and influence based on interests in banking, mining, and land, feels certain that, at long last, he will soon be rid of the "Poldark presence", which goes back several generations in Cornwall. By contrast, the Warleggans are sly and cunning up-and-comers anxious to place their humble origins fall behind them. Ross, over the previous year, has found himself mired in tragedy and mixed fortunes, due to the death of his first-born Julia and the failure of a mining venture in which he had invested a great deal of money. This causes strains in his relationship with Demelza, his wife. Demelza is one of the most unique characters I've ever come across in any novel I've read. A woman of humble status who through marriage earned the right to be regarded as a proper lady, Demelza is loving, generous of heart, resilient, and one of her husband's biggest defenders. To that end, she travels to Bodmin to visit one of the area's influential propertied men (Sir John Trevaunance) for help in providing good character references for her husband in court. Not an easy task. France is convulsed in revolution and any act or gesture in England that suggests common cause with the revolutionaries in Paris is regarded as threats to national security. So, it looks that Ross's life may soon be forfeit upon resolution of his case. The following extract conveys with a deep poignancy the state of the Poldarks feelings for one another ---[Ross] "... thought: Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast... If she went to London or Bath she'd have half the aristocracy at her feet. Instead she's immured here, in an ancient house and with a bankrupt husband, doing half her own work. It must be galling to her to feel her life's slipping away. She was twenty-six last birthday. Perhaps that's the reason for the change. But it's a change towards me. 'What are you thinking of, Ross?' 'Um? Oh, about the rain. The Mellingey will be in flood very soon.' What would have happened, he thought, if she'd married me ?[Ross is thinking of Elizabeth Chynoweth, the great love of his life, who married his cousin Francis while Ross was in America, where it had been presumed he had died fighting for King and Country] Would events have been very different? We're the slaves of our characters: would I have been happier, or she? Perhaps there are elements in her nature and mine which would have made our life together difficult. And what of this young woman [Demelza] beside him, whom he had loved devotedly for four years and still did love? She had given him more than perhaps Elizabeth ever could: months of unflawed relationship, unquestioning trust (which he was now betraying in thought). Oh, nonsense. What man did not at some time or another glance elsewhere; and who could complain if it remained at a glance? (Chance was a fine thing.) And if there had been a cooling between him and Demelza, hers had been the first move, not his."All in all, this is a richly layered novel --- full of surprises ---which I invite the reader of this review to peruse at his/her leisure. You'll be glad that you did.
—KOMET
