Ross Poldark

The first installment in Winston Graham's twelve-novel Poldark series is set in Cornwall, the rugged southwestern county of England, during the 1780s, a period of economic hardship following Britain's defeat in the American War of Independence. The story follows Ross Poldark, a young gentleman farmer and former soldier, as he returns from war to find almost everything he counted on has been lost.

The novel opens in February 1783 with Ross's father, Joshua Poldark, gravely ill at the family's modest estate, Nampara. Joshua summons his elder brother Charles from the grander family seat at Trenwith to discuss his affairs. The brothers have never been close: Charles, a prosperous man who controls the family's mining interests, has long disapproved of Joshua's unconventional life. Joshua explains that he has little to leave and asks Charles to oversee matters until Ross returns from military service. He raises the subject of Elizabeth Chynoweth, a young woman from a neighboring gentry family with whom he hopes Ross will make a match, but Charles responds evasively. Left alone, Joshua reflects on his dead wife, Grace, and drifts into a dreamlike vision of walking into the sea. The narrative implies his death as he sleeps, while his servants, Jud and Prudie Paynter, drink gin in the kitchen, oblivious.

Eight months later, Captain Ross Poldark arrives in Truro by coach, bearing a scar on his cheek and a limp from wounds received in the war. He learns from the family notary that Joshua's estate is badly reduced, then rides to Trenwith for what he intends as a brief stop. There he walks in on a dinner party celebrating the engagement of his cousin Francis to Elizabeth, the very woman Ross has loved and expected to marry. Verity, Francis's warm-hearted sister, is the first to greet him. Ross absorbs the devastating news in public, manages a toast to the couple, and departs into the rain. At Nampara he finds the house in squalor, overrun with chickens, and the Paynters dead drunk.

Ross begins restoring the neglected estate. He hires Jim Carter, a young man from the nearby mining hamlet of Grambler who left underground work because foul air aggravated a hereditary lung condition. He visits his tenants and learns that Reuben Clemmow, an unstable man, has been stalking Jinny Martin, the teenage daughter of the level-headed Zacky Martin. Elizabeth and Francis marry in November, and Ross forces himself to attend. He endures a painful private exchange with Elizabeth and rides home into the darkest hour of his life.

Through the winter, Verity becomes Ross's chief consolation. Francis visits Nampara, and Ross takes him underground into the old workings of Wheal Grace, a mine named after Ross's mother, where Ross spots signs of copper. When Francis tries to explain his courtship of Elizabeth, Ross's expression turns dangerous, and Francis falls through a rotten bridge into a flooded shaft. Ross hauls him out, revealing both the depth of his resentment and its limits.

At a spring ball in Truro, Captain Andrew Blamey, a quiet Falmouth packet captain, dances repeatedly with Verity, and a cautious attraction develops. The sight of Elizabeth at the ball overwhelms Ross; he leaves and spends the night with a woman at a tavern, an encounter he later sees as empty and unfulfilling. The next day at Redruth Fair, he rescues a half-starved girl of about thirteen from a group of boys beating her. She is Demelza Carne, a miner's daughter from Illogan, fierce and filthy, clinging to a mangy puppy named Garrick. On impulse, Ross offers her a position as kitchen maid and takes both girl and dog home to Nampara. Her father, Tom Carne, arrives days later to retrieve her. Ross fights him in a brutal wrestling match and throws him out. That night, Illogan miners march on Nampara in retaliation, but Jud and Jim Carter rally the local men, who drive the invaders off in a brawl.

News surfaces that Captain Blamey, in a previous marriage, struck his pregnant wife while drunk, causing her death. Verity, already aware of his past, insists he has reformed. When Charles forbids the relationship, Ross allows the couple to meet secretly at Nampara. Charles and Francis discover the meetings. A confrontation leads to a duel: Francis wounds Blamey's hand, and Blamey shoots Francis near the shoulder. Francis survives, but the affair destroys all hope of reconciliation. Blamey rides away, and Verity retreats into years of quiet grief.

Jim Carter marries Jinny Martin, and Ross gives them a rent-free cottage. Reuben Clemmow resurfaces violently, attacking Ross in the stables before breaking into the Carters' cottage on a stormy night, stabbing baby Benjamin and knifing Jinny. Clemmow dies falling from a window. Elizabeth gives birth to a son, Geoffrey Charles, and at the christening, Charles Poldark collapses with a heart stroke that leaves him an invalid. Ross overhears women gossiping that he has taken Demelza as his mistress, but the talk does not change his behavior.

By 1787, Demelza is seventeen, transformed into a capable young woman who manages the household and has taught herself to play Grace Poldark's old spinet. Ross opens Wheal Leisure, a copper mine, with five other investors. Jim Carter, who returned to underground mining at Grambler, is caught poaching and sentenced to two years despite Ross's impassioned testimony. That same day, Tom Carne, now a reformed Methodist, visits Nampara and asks Demelza to come home to help his pregnant new wife. Panicked at the prospect of losing everything she loves, Demelza conceives a desperate plan. That evening she puts on a pale blue satin gown that belonged to Ross's mother, combs her hair up, and goes downstairs to Ross, who has returned bitter and drunk from the trial. Their encounter begins with anger and tears but ends with Demelza in Ross's bed.

Ross marries Demelza within days, on June 24, 1787. Wheal Leisure strikes copper. On an August evening, Ross and Demelza row to Sawle Bay to watch the pilchard catch by moonlight, and in the quiet intimacy of the night, Ross discovers an unexpected, uncomplicated happiness. Charles dies in September. Verity visits Nampara, and after initial tension, she and Demelza become fast friends. At Christmas, Francis invites the couple to Trenwith, where Demelza holds her own among the gentry, singing a tender love lyric and a bawdy ballad that delight and provoke the company in equal measure. That night, the last barriers between Ross and Demelza dissolve.

Walking home on Christmas Day through racing clouds and intermittent sunshine, Ross is filled with a rare, complete happiness. He thinks of a definition of eternity as holding the whole fullness of life in one moment and wishes he could stop time on this hilltop with Demelza at his side. As they near home, she begins to hum, mischievously and contentedly, the refrain of Jud's favorite old song.