When he returns, he discovers that his father has died, his family home has fallen into disrepair, the hard-drinking servants are selling off the household items, and the woman he loves is engaged to marry his cousin.

[3][4] Poldark's character emerges throughout the book in a number of subplots involving his relatives, women with whom he has romantic entanglements, the local gentry, servants, tenants, miners, poachers and competitors.

"[7] A writer for The Guardian similarly noted the importance of place: "In the mid-1970s, I spent a summer sitting on the olive moorland that rolls along the Cornish coast, sketching picturesque ruins of tin mines.

Ross Poldark and the subsequent novel in the series (Demelza) have been analyzed by scholars who say that as the most popular fictional representations of Cornwall, they helped define a Cornish national identity.

"[10] Another popular review resonates with the scholarly point about how Ross Poldark helped define a Cornish national identity by noting that the book "frequently captures the local dialects and accents within his often-phonetic writing, sometimes making the language a bit tricky to understand, but this illustrates his ability to write as people truly speak" as well as "artistically paint[ing] a picture of the environment and social atmosphere.