Waterfalls in Cornwall
Friends,
I sometimes use my blogs for thinking out a paper, a class, a book, and that’s what I’m doing here.
How to account for the quality and vision of the once again famous Poldark novels would be the goal of this book.
Lacking the lifeblood of most literary (and other kinds of) biographies, the cooperation of the family members and a rich cache of private letters by Graham, I propose to raise the status and make the quality of the Poldark series taken as a whole understandable by
Part One: Three chapters: a study of the author as we find him in all his published works and what I have been able to reach in libraries and online:
Chapter One: the story of his life as he tells it
Chapter Two: genre analysis, first the bloody death kind, and then Chapter Three, of historical fiction as inflected by regional romance.
Chapter Four. A gender fault-line is responsible for the distinct distance between these kinds, as well as the region they are set in. Cornish gothic links them. Lately I find his use of the gothic one of the more interesting elements in his historical fiction; it links this group of works to historical fictions by popular and masterly writers (Gabaldon to Mantel) ….
Part Two: Four chapters: we turn to the twelve Poldark novels. Class and status; marriage and sexual politics; economic and social politics and circumstances ….
Part Three: Two chapters: Graham’s legacy is as much in the historical film adaptations he encouraged as in any of his books. Film noir and costume drama.
A coda will return us to Graham, and how a post-modern approach to all his writing (including scattered non-fiction and short tales) can enable a different perspective, and bring out unexpected pleasures (not susceptible of genre or biographical analysis) in some of his short and repressed fictions (which embarrassed him).
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Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) and Ross (Aidan Turner) Poldark — from Season 1
Once again (for a second time) a BBC serial drama called simply Poldark crossing more than year and adapting the first seven books of the series has had a phenomenal success, and has placed the name of the author of the source of popular money-making film before the public: Winston Graham. I say yet another because arguably at least three times before, film adaptations of other of Graham’s books have startled the public into attention: 1947 a film noir, Take My Life; 1964, a still remembered Hitchcock psychological drama, Marnie; and 1971, an unusual crime suspense story focusing on disability, The Walking Stick. The books have rarely gone out of print (or not at all — especially the first seven); and there are readers who profess to like some of the murder suspense contemporary mysteries.
One problem is there is a seeming uncrossable disconnect between Graham’s contemporary murder fiction (there usually is a murder in these, often of an evil woman) and his sixteen or so historical fictions (all but one set in Cornwall). I found analogous patterns and paradigms across both sets of books, similar character types – like marital and justified rapes of women.
I don’t say some of these suspense are not interesting and a few are good – the question is what lies behind the compulsion for these because many are pulp or so thin that the genre takes over. There is a very genuine interest in an immediate time and place, in technologies, the arts and contemporary issues in the decade each of them are written.
Much of his historical fiction is however truly fine (not all).
If nothing else, the film and radio and TV adaptations show the appeal of his matter to better writers, readers, film-makers and the public at large, not to omit those who seek to make money.
From the Walking Stick (1971): Deborah Dainton (Samantha Eggar) and Leigh Hartley (David Hemmings).
I’ve now read most of Graham’s historical fiction; I have eleven or twelve of the non-Poldarks to go (as I consider I have read quite adequately enough Marnie, Groves of Eagles, and Angel Pearl and Little God), some of the stories in the one book of short stories, Japanese Girl (with some scattered ones sent me by attachment), one history Spanish Armada(s), which I didn’t finish. Sigh.
In the case of rewrites, I have looked at all of them and found them mostly decidedly inferior to the first version (even if here and there are some good improvements, concision, new wit).
There are 4 short tales I’ve read (“Meeting Demelza,” “Christmas at Nampara,” “Vive le Roi,” “At the Chateau Lartrec”) that I liked and remember these for their gothic spirit; “The Japanese Girl” I can remember nothing of; “The Medici Earring” I unfortunately remember (because it’s a mean nasty story worthy O Henry), so I’ve read and remember 5 with a bunch to go – not that many and they are not long
I regard Poldark’s Cornwall as a Poldark book, and a couple of Poldark short tales (above cited).
I must read very carefully and create a chronology as best I can from his private memoir and oeuvre (including the radio and stage plays, scripts
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Winston Graham in 1945
This where I’m at. I am in the middle of Sleeping Partner just now and it confounds me how Graham could turn to writing this thin mechanical fiction after having achieved Warleggan. It has to be an inner compulsion that makes him write in this male-centered narrowly formulaic misogynistic genre. He returned to this compulsion (money-making was part of his rationale) after the astounding success of the two 1970s BBC seasons of Poldark and a remarkably book like The Angry Tide.
I am carrying on because I like the Poldark books enough, am interested in historical fiction and romance, in the sub-genre of Cornish or regional romance, am interested in film adaptation and it seems to me Winston Graham is an author whose work ought to be taken into account as a whole, made some sense of. I’ve done so much and it’s hard to let go?
I admit one impulse in my first curiosity was when I discovered Winston Graham is never mentioned even in common surveys of good 20th century historical fiction nor suspense/thriller/mystery books. I have yet to come across his name or his books in any of these. He does get a chapter of analysis of the Poldark books in books on Cornwall, and on costume-drama period film serial adaptation. But in these cases it is not that he or his presence is felt to compelling, or anything in his art, but that the texts themselves or videos belong to a social phenomenon of the 20th and 21st century the editor of the volume felt worth while exploring.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
On the fifth season of this new Poldark where the content is almost wholly invented by Debbie Horsfield, using just hints and remembered details from the years 1799-1810 when the eighth novel, The Stranger from the Sea begins:
I haven’t been able to watch as yet: a friend is going to send me a DVD tomorrow and I’ll be a week late each time. I expect I will be dismayed — why? because I’m so involved with the books. But I hope to keep a balanced reaction. On one detail I saw described a couple of times: that George is presented as deeply upset. In The Stranger from the Sea, we move more or less quickly to George contemplating re-marriage. Remember the novel is set 10 years later, but without going to the book to quote exactly I remember a few paragraphs where Graham talks of how upset George was at the death of Elizabeth, how it took real time for him to come to terms with his own role in her death and so on. I offer the idea this is probably one of the places where Horsfield takes a few twigs that are in the later books about “between the acts” and develops it. Oh yes and it was done for powerful people to hire (usually for pay) a trusted upper class person (but needing money) to in effect spy for him and be a sort of negotiator. Graham did much admired George Canning (read about him, he was a remarkable admirable man in many ways), so if Ross is presented as a sort of spy, then that too comes from these later novels. Eventually he and Canning’s correspondence (all invented of course) is presented in these later novels.
And Demelza does accept her role at home. In a way she much prefers to be at home where she is mistress of all she surveys and her class and lack of status hurt her not at all. And she and Ross have some beautiful talk scenes together.
E.M.
Diana Birchall: “Is the family helping?
Me: No they have now (in effect) refused. They don’t want a biography. Or to put it another way after a very grudging and dictatorial letter about granting permission temporarily, to be withdrawn at any time, the son stopped answering letters.
Diana: Oh, dear. That’s why I asked – I remember you said they did like your approach, etc. But biographies are tricky things, and families change their minds.
Me: Andrew Graham never wanted it and I don’t have the money or personality to chase him. what happened is I wrote an editor at the company who his father worked with all his life; the editor liked the project and convinced the son to answer, but he never really wanted it. So I’ll do what I can without him or money or connections or the ability to travel on my own — I am nervous and miserable away from home when I am by myself.
So given what and whom I am the main practical obstacle is now having mentally to process these suspense books.
Actually I have two book projects and more hope of publication for “Not an anomaly,” but I don’t do this work for conventional publication.
See:
https://austenreveries.wordpress.com/2019/07/12/atthesecrossroadsoflifeansweringtheheartsneeds/
and scroll down.
Rosalynde: “Quite a challenge ….”
Me: If I’m lucky I have 15 years of life left; at some point I will no longer be able to teach and then I’ll write what I’ve gathered — or I’ll take time off before that, say one term and see how I get on … ” Since no one cares, and I expect no help from anyone, I’m telling myself what I want to create is the typescript itself, it is possible.
What comes to mind are questions of chronology: when did WG or his wife do this or that; where did they live when? that I have from information online. More details like what hospital did she stay in when she had asthma (if she did stay in a hospital), when she had a heart attack … Now this kind of thing is probably beyond me.
Diana Birchall: I know how brimming with projects and intellectual life you are…I was just curious since I remembered you being in touch with them. But it doesn’t really matter, you can do what you want with the subject and maybe it’s better that way!
Me: Alas in my journey (slog) through Winston Graham’s writing I have found that arguably a lot of it is 2nd or just hollow (an exercise of the genre conventions). Personally I find repulsive some of these male-centered bloody murder detective (the epithets are so many as they all avoid what is at the center of “hard boiled” versions), and I enjoy so much other literature far more and have other projects, that the stony wall of the family refusal has not hurt that much. He just doesn’t have the talent to carry off a novel written in an imitation Elizabethan style — which Hilary Mantel did (because she invented an alive one for her Thomas Cromwell trilogy). Had they been willing, I’d have been for the sake of the historical fiction and some of the other work and the man’s politics and humanity, but now it’s something I’m doing alongside other more compelling things. I can quite see writing about the Poldark books in the context of some of this.
What’s left of non-Poldarks that I must read or reread:
1957 Greek Fire (I read it before but hardly remember it) — it has value because of the politics and detailed realism
1959 Tumbled House — it transcends the genre to be about familial, sexual, money issues, and is well done. Flaws are of the genre (there is a blame the woman climax) and also some creepy prejudices against the poor, older women, black and gay people. An allusion to the Lady’s Not For Burning might save it more.
1965 After the Act (I stopped when I realized this was about a man’s remorse because he’s gotten away with killing his much older rich wife)
1967 Walking Stick (I did find some value, partly maybe it was the film feeding back into the book …)
1971 Stories from Japanese Girl as yet unread
1972 Spanish Armadas (I never finished it so I’ll try again — perhaps a rare attempt to tell the story of these attempted invasions just from Cornish land- and seascape point of view)
1986 The Green Flash (never opened it)
1991 Stephanie (it has one of these egregiously lurid pictures on the cover, never opened it)
1995 Tremor
1998 The Ugly Sister (said to be a historical novel set in Cornwall)
I have read and remember:
1960 Groves of Eagles (twice, 2/3s through and twice gave up at same point)
1961 Marnie (just loathe it, a Lolita in reverse; the same faux use of irony to present, in the case of Nabokov to get away with violent pornography, in Hitchcock’s case he took the Graham story and easily turned it into violent soft-core pornography in this original to stigmatize the woman as a freak and find the cause for her lying her awful mother who killed her baby because she was prostituting herself … Can I endure to skim/read because it is well known.
1970 Angel, Pearl and Little God (better than all of these but Walking Stick: fits paradigm where Marlon Brandon would be the thug, some actress playing hard treacherous women who look all obedience, and a heavyset deeper seen type, say Burt Lancaster?)
So 11 perhaps 12 non Poldark books to be reread; 8 Poldarks interwoven …. A bright spot: as the post Warleggan Poldark novels come into view chronologically I may or shall reread them …. what I need to read carefully are the last five of these novels.
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