Marie Powell is 16 when her father marries her to the poet John Milton in payment of a debt. They move to a pretty garden-house in London, but she struggles to adjust to her new life. Her husband is high-minded and unyielding, and only makes Marie long for the man she really loves. As Civil War sweeps across England and the King is killed, a battle starts to rage between husband and wife - one that only the powerful can win.

Told through the fictional journals of Milton's wife, Robert Graves's sympathetic and sensitive reconstruction of her tragic life is a convincing, linguistically rich portrait of 17th-century England, ravaged by war. Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 - 7 December 1985) was an English poet and novelist, scholar, translator, and writer of antiquity, specialising in Classical Greece and Rome. During his long life he produced more than 140 works. Graves's translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths, the memoir of his early life, Good-bye To All That, and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, have never been out of print. Graves earned his living by writing popular historical novels, including I, Claudius(for which he was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize), King Jesus, The Golden Fleece and Count Belasarius.

He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961 and made an honorary fellow of St John's College, Oxford, in 1971.