Robert Graves
Robert Graves was a multifaceted English writer known for his prolific output in poetry, novels, literary criticism, and translations, as well as his engagement with mythology. He is often recognized for his controversial ideas and deep explorations of themes such as war, femininity, and ancient mythological figures, particularly the Triple Goddess. Graves's early life was influenced by his family's scholarly background and connections to Germany, but his experiences as a soldier in World War I profoundly shaped his artistic voice. His poetry often reflects his traumatic experiences from the war, although he later distanced himself from psychological interpretations of his work.
His notable literary contributions include historical novels such as *I, Claudius* and critical works like *The White Goddess*, which examine the intersection of mythology and poetic expression. Graves's personal life was marked by tumultuous relationships, particularly with poet Laura Riding, who significantly impacted his writing style. He spent much of his later life in Majorca, where he continued to write and explore his interests in mythology and history. Graves's work has left a lasting legacy in literature, influencing various cultural movements and discussions around gender and mythology.
Robert Graves
English poet, novelist, and critic
- Born: July 24, 1895
- Birthplace: Wimbledon, Surrey, England
- Died: December 7, 1985
- Place of death: Deyá, Majorca, Spain
Biography
Robert Graves was one of the most prolific and controversial writers of the twentieth century: poet, novelist, literary critic, biographer, lecturer, translator of ancient texts, and popularizer of mythology. Poetry was his constant love; he claimed to have written his novels only to make money. Some of his work shocked historians and theologians, and he probably influenced the feminist movement, indirectly at least, with his enthusiasm for the ancient Triple Goddess of the moon, the earth, and the underworld. A popular film was based on his biographical Lawrence and the Arabs, and a successful miniseries was written for television based on his two historical novels about the Roman emperor Claudius.
Graves was born to Alfred Graves and Amalie von Ranke Graves. Alfred Graves was a Gaelic scholar, an inspector of schools in London, and a writer of poetry of a conventional sort. Amalie Graves was related to the German historian Leopold von Ranke. In early childhood the Graves children sometimes visited relatives in Germany, including their aunt the baroness von Aufsess, who lived in a medieval castle in the Bavarian Alps. These fascinating environs no doubt influenced the boy’s early romantic poetry. The German connection, however, became a social embarrassment to him before World War I. During his school days at Charterhouse, a preparatory school, he began to insist that he was Irish like his father and paternal grandfather.
When the war started the nineteen-year-old Graves joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and went to France. In his autobiography, Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography, he provides one of the best descriptions of trench warfare to come out of World War I. Graves was severely wounded, both physically and emotionally, by the war. His experiences and his friendship with another poet on the front, Siegfried Sassoon, altered his poetic outlook. Graves never became a “war poet,” as Sassoon did, but his poetry was deeply affected by his neurasthenia, popularly called shell shock.
During this period Graves believed that poetry served a psychologically therapeutic function in allowing a writer to work through mental and emotional conflicts. He later repudiated this function of poetry and actively denied psychological explanations of his literary work. His protests were not entirely convincing to some critics, however, for some of his best poetry—in The Pier-Glass, for example—employs gothic effects that mirrored his turbulent psyche.
In 1918 Graves married Nancy Nicholson, a young painter, socialist, and vehement feminist. Although Graves generally agreed with his wife’s view of male domination, her extreme preoccupation with sexism eventually contributed to the deterioration of their relationship. Graves and his wife met many prominent English writers, including John Masefield, Bertrand Russell, John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, A. A. Milne, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, and T. E. Lawrence, who gave Graves four chapters of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), a history of the Arabian revolt in which Lawrence had participated. Graves’s Lawrence and the Arabs recounted Lawrence’s Arabian exploits.
By far the most influential friend was the American poet Laura Riding. Graves faced a melodramatic domestic crisis in 1929 when Riding jumped from a fourth-story window and broke her back. Miraculously, she recovered, and Graves left his wife and spent the next ten years with Riding. She had a profound effect on his poetry, urging him to think more clearly, to pursue verbal precision, and to forgo the more emotional effects he had used when he viewed poetry as psychologically therapeutic. Graves and Riding settled in Deyá, Majorca, which remained Graves’s home for the rest of his life. After Riding left Graves in 1939 for the American poet Schuyler Jackson, Graves married Beryl Hodge.
In the 1930s Graves began writing his series of historical novels, of which the best are considered to be I, Claudius, Count Belisarius, and King Jesus. The last-named is the most controversial application of Graves’s theory that the Mediterranean peoples were initially worshipers of the Triple Goddess, whereas male gods were originally sons, consorts, and ritual sacrifices to the goddess. Graves explored this theory in the critical volume The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, and from that point on the goddess mythology inspired much of Graves’s poetry as well as his continued research into mythology.
Author Works
Poetry:
Over the Brazier, 1916
Goliath and David, 1916
Fairies and Fusiliers, 1917
Treasure Box, 1919
Country Sentiment, 1920
The Pier-Glass, 1921
The Feather Bed, 1923
Whipperginny, 1923
Mock Beggar Hall, 1924
The Marmosite’s Miscellany, 1925 (as John Doyle)
Welchman’s Hose, 1925
Poems: 1914–1926, 1927
Poems: 1914–1927, 1927
Poems: 1929, 1929
Ten Poems More, 1930
Poems: 1926–1930, 1931
To Whom Else?, 1931
Poems: 1930-1933, 1933
Collected Poems, 1938
No More Ghosts: Selected Poems, 1940
Work in Hand, 1942 (with others)
Poems: 1938–1945, 1946
Collected Poems: 1914–1947, 1948
Poems and Satires: 1951, 1951
Poems: 1953, 1953
Collected Poems: 1955, 1955
Poems Selected by Himself, 1957
The Poems of Robert Graves Chosen by Himself, 1958
Collected Poems: 1959, 1959
The Penny Fiddle: Poems for Children, 1960
Collected Poems, 1961
More Poems: 1961, 1961
The More Deserving Cases: Eighteen Old Poems for Reconsideration, 1962
New Poems: 1962, 1962
Ann at Highwood Hall: Poems for Children, 1964
Man Does, Woman Is, 1964
Love Respelt, 1965
Collected Poems: 1965, 1965
Seventeen Poems Missing from “Love Respelt,” 1966
Colophon to “Love Respelt,” 1967
Poems: 1965–1968, 1968
The Crane Bag, 1969
Love Respelt Again, 1969
Beyond Giving: Poems, 1969
Poems about Love, 1969
Advice from a Mother, 1970
Queen-Mother to New Queen, 1970
Poems: 1969–1970, 1970
The Green-Sailed Vessel, 1971
Poems: Abridged for Dolls and Princes, 1971
Poems: 1968–1970, 1971
Poems: 1970–1972, 1972
Poems: Selected by Himself, 1972
Deyá, 1972 (with Paul Hogarth)
Timeless Meetings: Poems, 1973
At the Gate, 1974
Collected Poems: 1975, 1975 (2 volumes)
New Collected Poems, 1977
Long Fiction:
My Head! My Head!, 1925
No Decency Left, 1932 (as Barbara Rich, with Laura Riding)
I, Claudius, 1934
Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina, 1934
Antigua, Penny, Puce, 1936 (also known as The Antigua Stamp, 1937)
Count Belisarius, 1938
Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth, 1940 (also known as Sergeant Lamb’s America)
Proceed, Sergeant Lamb, 1941
The Story of Marie Powell, Wife to Mr. Milton, 1943 (also known as Wife to Mr. Milton, the Story of Marie Powell)
The Golden Fleece, 1944 (also known as Hercules, My Shipmate, 1945)
King Jesus, 1946
Watch the North Wind Rise, 1949 (also knownas Seven Days in New Crete)
The Islands of Unwisdom, 1949 (also known as The Isles of Unwisdom)
Homer’s Daughter, 1955
They Hanged My Saintly Billy, 1957
Short Fiction:
The Shout, 1929
¡Catacrok! Mostly Stories, Mostly Funny, 1956
Collected Short Stories, 1964
Nonfiction:
On English Poetry, 1922
The Meaning of Dreams, 1924
Poetic Unreason, and Other Studies, 1925
Contemporary Techniques of Poetry: A Political Analogy, 1925
Another Future of Poetry, 1926
Impenetrability: Or, The Proper Habit of English, 1926
The English Ballad: A Short Critical Survey, 1927
Lars Porsena: Or, The Future of Swearing and Improper Language, 1927
A Survey of Modernist Poetry, 1927 (with Laura Riding)
Lawrence and the Arabs, 1927 (also known as Lawrence and the Arabian Adventure, 1928)
A Pamphlet against Anthologies, 1928 (with Riding, also known as Against Anthologies)
Mrs. Fisher: Or, The Future of Humour, 1928
Goodbye to All That: An Autobiography, 1929
T. E. Lawrence to His Biographer Robert Graves, 1938
The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918–1938, 1940 (with Alan Hodge)
The Reader over Your Shoulders: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose, 1943 (with Hodge)
The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, 1948
The Common Asphodel: Collected Essays on Poetry, 1922–1949, 1949
Occupation: Writer, 1950
The Nazarene Gospel Restored, 1953 (with Joshua Podro)
The Crowning Privilege: The Clark Lectures, 1954–1955, 1955
Adam’s Rib and Other Anomalous Elements in the Hebrew Creation Myth: A New View, 1955
The Greek Myths, 1955 (2 volumes); Jesus in Rome: A Historical Conjecture, 1957 (with Podro)
Five Pens in Hand, 1958
Greek Gods and Heroes, 1960
Oxford Addresses on Poetry, 1962
Nine Hundred Iron Chariots: The Twelfth Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture, 1963
Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis, 1964 (with Raphael Patai)
Majorca Observed, 1965 (with Paul Hogarty)
Mammon and the Black Goddess, 1965
Poetic Craft and Principle, 1967
The Crane Bag and Other Disputed Subjects, 1969
On Poetry: Collected Talks and Essays, 1969
Difficult Questions, Easy Answers, 1972
Children’s/Young Adult Literature:
The Big Green Book, 1962
The Siege and Fall of Troy, 1962
Two Wise Children, 1966
The Poor Boy Who Followed His Star, 1968
Translations:
Almost Forgotten Germany, 1936 (of Georg Schwarz; translated with Laura Riding)
The Transformation of Lucius, Otherwise Known as “The Golden Ass,” 1950 (of Lucius Apuleius)
The Cross and the Sword, 1954 (of Manuel de Jesús Galván)
Pharsalia: Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars, 1956 (of Lucan)
Winter in Majorca, 1956 (of George Sand)
The Twelve Caesars, 1957 (of Suetonius)
The Anger of Achilles: Homer’s “Iliad,” 1959
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 1967 (with Omar Ali-Shah)
Edited Texts:
Oxford Poetry: 1921, 1921 (with Alan Porter and Richard Hughes)
John Skelton: Laureate, 1927
The Less Familiar Nursery Rhymes, 1927
The Comedies of Terence, 1962
English and Scottish Ballads, 1975
Miscellaneous:
Steps: Stories, Talks, Essays, Poems, Studies in History, 1958
Food for Centaurs: Stories, Talks, Critical Studies, Poems, 1960
Selected Poetry and Prose, 1961
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Robert Graves. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Essays on Graves’s historical novels, autobiography, and major themes. Includes chronology and bibliography.
Bryant, Hallman Bell. Robert Graves: An Annotated Bibliography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Contains a select but good listing of primary sources and a thorough, annotated catalog of secondary sources. The latter are arranged alphabetically by author. The cutoff date is 1985. The index refers to authors, titles of critical works, journals in which they appeared, works by Graves, as well as significant themes in the writings of Graves.
Graves, Richard Perceval. Robert Graves: The Assault Heroic, 1895-1926. New York: Viking Press, 1986. Written by Graves’s nephew. Though primarily concerned with Graves’s life, this book delineates the conditions that led the poet to write his autobiography and leave England. The effect of World War I and his rejection of conventional morality appear largely in this study.
Graves, Richard Perceval. Robert Graves: The Years with Laura, 1926-1940. New York: Viking Press, 1990. The second volume of Graves’s three-volume study. Looking closely at the relationship between Graves and the American poet Laura Riding, this volume provides information concerning the respective contributions of the collaborators. Richard Perceval Graves is concerned with literary matters, though his fascination with the sensational aspects of the years Robert Graves and Riding spent together is evident. Of much interest, as in the first volume, are the notes, which indicate the breadth of the poet’s friendships and the variety of places in which his papers have been placed.
Graves, Richard Perceval. Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-1985. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995. This concluding volume to Graves’s three-volume biography lacks the savor and drama of the second volume because it covers the relatively sedate life of an aged, lionized poet. Robert Graves had by age forty-five settled into life with Beryl Hodge, his second wife. They took up residence in Majorca, where he was visited by an unending succession of disciples and young women whom Graves adopted as lovers and muses.
Kernowski, Frank L. The Early Poetry of Robert Graves: The Goddess Beckons. University of Texas, 2002. A portrait of Graves and his work that benefits from the author’s own interviews with his subject and input from Graves’s daughter.
Quinn, Patrick J., ed. New Perspectives on Robert Graves. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1999. A thoughtful, updated volume on the works of Graves. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Seymour, Miranda. Robert Graves: Life on the Edge. New York: Henry Holt, 1995. Study relates Graves’s experiences in World War I and his relationships with women to this theory of inspiration.
Seymour-Smith, Martin. Robert Graves: His Life and Work. New York: Paragon House, 1988. Intimate, fascinating glimpse of Graves the man. Seymour-Smith had known Graves since 1943 and has written extensively on him since 1956. Excellent introduction to Graves’s remarkable life and literary career.