Robert Graves

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was born in Wimbledon, England. He was the son of the Irish writer Alfred Percival Graves and Amalie von Ranke. He went from school directly to the First World War, where he served and reached the rank of captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. His primary inclination was towards poetry. Except for a year spent as a professor of English literature at the University of Cairo in 1926, he devoted himself entirely to writing. His bibliography, published in 1965, credits him with 114 diverse works, but he eventually exceeded 120. His historical novels include: "I, Claudius"; "Claudius the God"; "Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth"; "Count Belisarius"; "Wife to Mr. Milton"; "The Golden Fleece"; "The Isles of Unwisdom". His autobiography, "Good-Bye to All That", was published in 1929. The two most discussed of his non-fiction works are "The White Goddess", which introduces a new interpretation of poetic instinct, and "The Nazarene Gospel Restored", which deals with and re-examines the early Christian period. He translated Apuleius, Lucian, and Suetonius from Latin and, for the first time in modern times, compiled what has survived of Greek mythology in his "The Greek Myths". He was elected Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford in 1961 and became an honorary fellow of St John's College, Oxford, in 1971. In 1975, a new edition of his collected poems was released. After 1929, he lived permanently in Majorca. He passed away in 1986.