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The Black Moon

by Winston Graham Book 5 in the Poldark series.

First published 1973

4.4(5,287)

The birth of Valentine Warleggan deepens the hostility between the Poldark and Warleggan families, while Morwenna Chynoweth and Drake Carne are drawn into a love that exposes the brutality of social rank. Ross’s household remains outwardly established but privately threatened by old choices and new resentments.

The novel’s 1794–1795 setting sits inside the French Revolutionary Wars, when Cornwall’s coast, naval service and private loyalties are all touched by the conflict with France. Graham balances family melodrama with a wartime world of prisoners, seaborne danger, inherited privilege and local dependence on mining and trade.

Cornwall’s mining economy gives the family conflict material stakes beyond romance. Credit, mineral rights and employment bind poorer households to landowners and investors, while wartime disruption affects trade and naval movement along the coast. The Poldark-Warleggan rivalry therefore operates through economic dependence as well as personal hostility, making private choices capable of altering entire communities.

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