Robert Graves 1895–1986

Abstract

Robert von Ranke Graves, son of the Irish writer A. P. Graves (1846–1931) and Amalia von Ranke, was born in Wimbledon and educated at Charterhouse and, later, at St John’s College, Oxford; he joined the army straight from school, in 1914. Apart from one year spent teaching in Egypt (1926) he lived by writing, publishing more than a hundred books; and except for the years of the Second World War, he lived abroad — in Majorca from 1946. He is best known for the autobiography of his early life Goodbye to All That (1929), for historical novels including I Claudius and Claudius the God in 1934, for The White Goddess (1948) which assigns poetry to the province of a goddess-muse, The Greek Myths (a handbook, 1955), and for his versatile, lucid poetry which belongs to no ‘movement’. Collected Poems (1955) was enlarged in 1975. Graves was Oxford Professor of Poetry (while still resident in Majorca) from 1961 to 1966.