Capt. Ross Poldark, moody Cornish hero of "The Renegade," is the sort of character who might feel at home in a novel by Bronte (Emily or Charlotte). A kind of Heathcliffian Mr. Rochester, Captain Poldark is separated from Cornwallis' defeated army after the Peace of 1783. Returning to England in a marrying mood, he finds his childhood sweetheart wed to another….

As you may have gathered, this melodramatic tale by Winston Graham has a decided nineteenth-century flavor, stylewise, even though its action takes place a century earlier. Victorianism in literature is not entirely a drawback; the nineteenth-century novel sometimes possessed solid virtues. Its leisurely pace allowed an author to examine the foibles of even minor characters. It had solidified social relationships and moral values to write about. And frequently it worked up lofty indignation at the plight of the "lower classes."

All these attributes help make "The Renegade" a different and, in its small way, distinctive historical novel. Most of its historical background is what we call nowadays "social history." Swallowing his romantic disappointment, young Captain Poldark sets out to revive his family's worked-out tin and copper mines. We readers are thereupon given glimpses of the short and simple annals of Cornwall's poor (thickly idiomatic tenant farmers, fishermen and miners) and their children, who went down into the pits at the age of 8 and coughed blood at 11 or 12.

We get a good idea too of how provincial gentry lived in the reign of George III. Cornish society, be it said, reacted most unfavorably when one of its paid-up members—the same Captain Poldark—adopted a ragged 13-year old (female) waif named Demelza Carne. By the time Poldark, Pygmalion-like, has deloused, befriended and educated his ward, four years have elapsed, and Demelza is a big girl now. Poldark is the last to notice this, but he catches on eventually.