Wife to Mr Milton Author:Robert Graves Considered to be his best, 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 (tho... more »ugh we get a close-up of the execution of King Charles), but it doesn't depend on these to such an extent that this weakens it. Its strongest points are its depiction of everyday (middle-class) life during the period and its portrait of Milton, a subject whom Graves, as a poet and a student of poetry as well as a novelist, is perhaps unusually qualified to tackle. While Wife to Mr. Milton will not appeal to as wide an audience as I, Claudius, it is definitely worth a look.« less