Unexpected fresh outlook on Winston Graham’s Poldark & Non-Poldark novels: through allusion, ironies, female POVs

Warleggan, the original or first 1953 cover — in line with the first covers for Ross Poldark and Demelza (we gaze through the windows of imagination into the Cornish landscape & seas) The Black Moon, the original 1973 cover Study of allusions (or intertextuality), uses of dramatic and plot-design irony, female POVs, working class allegiances […]

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Poldark: The Fifth Season: Episodes 5-8: an open-ended ending

Nampara and the sea All we know is this moment, and this moment, Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn’t exist yet. That’s tomorrow! It’s only now that can ever be, at any one moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive — […]

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Poldark: The Fifth season, Episodes 1-4: an evaluative review

One of several competing portraits of Edward Marcus Despard (wikipedia offers a barebones outline of the man’s life) Promotional parallel shot of Aidan Turner as the somewhat aging Ross Poldark, and Vincent Regan as Despard in his last 4 years (Season 5) Friends and readers, I had not written until now on the fifth season […]

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Outlander and Poldark: Late Night Musings

Jenny Fraser Murray (Laura Donnelly) unwrapping books from Paris, looking forward to reading them (Outlander 2:8, “Fox’s Lair,”adapted from Dragonfly in Amber) Francis Poldark (Kyle Soller) turning from harvest festival to see Ross and Demelza have come to join him, his family and tenants (Poldark 2:3, adapted from Jeremy Poldark) one must distrust the almost-the-same […]

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A Matter of Genre: Winston Graham’s Poldark novels: working outline for a book

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 […]

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Poldark at the Smithsonian

First editions — 1945 and 1946 bookjacket cover illustrations Friends and readers, Last night I was one in a sold-out auditorium in the Smithsonian Ripley Center come to listen to Julie Anne Taddeo speak interestingly and entertainingly on the “World of Poldark: Historical Realities and Fantasies of Georgian England.” I write this blog to share […]

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2018 Poldark, the fourth season: Four Swans through Angry Tide

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark brooding (near the opening, early still after the prologue) Elinor Tomlinson as Demelza Poldark (near opening &c), singing, troubled All we know is this moment, and this moment, Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn’t exist yet. That’s tomorrow! […]

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Poldark: the fourth season (2018): after watching the British version

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark (Episode 1, after prologue) Eleanor Tomlinson as Demelza singing (also Episode 1) Of course there has to be an end. Of course. For that is what everyone has faced since the world began. And that is — what do you call it — intolerable. It’s intolerable! So you must not […]

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Winston Graham’s Pre-Poldark Suspense Novels

Small still from 1977 Poldark, Episode 8: Hugh Armitage and Demelza Poldark becoming lovers in the marginalized rural landscape by the sea of Cornwall Friends, I noticed tonight many hits on my blogs and essays on the Poldark novels, especially those which provided the equivalent episodes of the older 1970s Poldark to the one aired […]

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Christmas in the Poldark world

Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) singing, after Christmas dinner (2015 Poldark, episode 4) Someone — a Latin poet — had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come — last chapter of Ross Poldark) Friends and readers […]

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