Ross Poldark
fictional character
Ross Poldark, fictional character, the patriarch of the Poldark dynasty in a series of historical novels by Winston Graham. Poldark is an army captain and member of the landed gentry of Cornwall in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Heroic and temperamental, he struggles to make his tin and copper mines profitable. He appears in Ross Poldark (1945), Demelza (1946), Warleggan (1953), The Four Swans (1976), The Angry Tide (1977), The Stranger from the Sea (1981), and The Loving Cup (1984).
The character was the subject of the popular Poldark television series by the BBC in 1975–77, and the motion picture Poldark, also based on the novels, was released in 1996.