[3] In a preface to The Black Moon, Graham explained his decision to revive the series after a two-decade hiatus.
He is a British Army officer who returns to his home in Cornwall from the American War of Independence only to find that Elizabeth Chynoweth, having told him she believed him dead, is about to marry his cousin Francis Poldark.
Gradually reconciled to the loss of Elizabeth's love, four years later Ross marries Demelza Carne, an urchin he has taken in as a servant.
[5] Taken home from Redruth Fair by Ross, miner's daughter Demelza and her dog Garrick have an unpromising start.
However, she soon develops into a charming, amusing, lovely young woman, eventually winning Ross's affection.
Strong-willed and independent, she begins a romance with Dwight Enys against her uncle's wishes, culminating in a disastrous plan to elope.
"Though Elizabeth had been constitutionally strong enough, perhaps some exhaustion in the ancient Chynoweth strain was to be the cause of this virtual obliteration of her personal appearance in any of her children, and the dominance of the three fathers.
Always impeccably dressed and elegantly behaved, he constantly schemes to increase his own wealth at the expense of others, including the Poldarks.
Eventually, several years after Elizabeth's death, he remarries a wealthy woman named Harriet (who is very fond of her large pet dogs, much to George's disdain), and they have twin daughters.
The two cousins were friends as boys but their relationship is tested severely when Francis marries Elizabeth, with lasting repercussions for them all.
He also sexually abuses his wife; when he is no longer able to force himself upon her during her pregnancy, he begins an affair with her fifteen-year-old sister, Rowella, which proves to be his undoing.
He forms a close friendship with Geoffrey Charles and falls in love with Morwenna yet she is forced by George Warleggan to marry Osborne Whitworth.
He becomes a blacksmith and later when Osborne Whitworth dies he does marry Morwenna and they have a child named Loveday, when Geoffrey Charles returns to Cornwall from Spain they continue their friendship with him.
The third child of Ross and Demelza, she has flirtations with the miner Ben Carter (son of Jim and Jinny (née Martin) Carter) and various noblemen, yet she marries the mysterious Stephen Carrington, the title character of The Stranger from the Sea, while unaware of his history of murder of his ex-wife Violet and son Jason.
His undoing is a flirtation with Harriet Warleggan which ends in him falling off his horse into a ditch and breaking his back.
He encounters his uncle Ross Poldark at war in Portugal and eventually returns to Cornwall and his home at Trenwith.
He marries a woman named Amadora who he met in Spain and they eventually have two daughters, Joanna "Juana" and Carla.
In his autobiography Memoirs of a Private Man, Graham explains that some of the stories and plots in the book draw from actual people and events from Cornish history.
[13] According to Graham, the names of the original people and places (and sometimes the dates) have been adapted or changed, but essentially the material facts remain the same.
[13] Some examples that Winston Graham used are: Real historical characters are woven into the narrative, for example Ross and Demelza's son Jeremy becomes besotted with Cuby, the fictional sister of John Bettesworth-Trevanion, a real Cornish politician who fled the debts he accumulated rebuilding Caerhays Castle.
Trevanion's struggles with debt, efforts to marry his sisters to money and flight to Paris are all detailed plot points in the text.