Marius and Delia

A masterpiece of early modern prose fiction, Marius & Delia was lost to readers for 300 years. Published without an imprint in the mid-1690s, the title page of Marius & Delia identified the author only by the initials D. M. A handwritten attribution on the only known surviving copy credited the work to Deborah Milton, daughter of poet and polemicist John Milton. Marius & Delia draws together elements from picaresque fiction, Cervantes, Jonson and Restoration comedy to create a unified narrative centered upon a father-daughter relationship, played out against a realistic backdrop of late 17th-century political turmoil-featuring plots and counterplots, peopled by counterfeiters, con artists, alchemists, would-be regicides and "all-cause rogues." --Back cover.