Robert Graves

Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, historical novelist, and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet, and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology. Graves produced more than 140 works in his lifetime. His poems, translations, innovative analysis of Greek myths, a memoir of his early life—including his role in World War I—Good-Bye to All That, and his speculative study of poetic inspiration The White Goddess have never been out of print. He is also a renowned short story writer, with stories such as "The Tenement" still being popular today.

He earned his living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as I, Claudius; King Jesus; The Golden Fleece; and Count Belisarius. He also was a prominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versions of The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular for their clarity and entertaining style. Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius, and Claudius the God.

Graves was born into a middle-class family in Wimbledon, then part of Surrey, now part of south London. He was the third of five children born to Alfred Perceval Graves (1846–1931), who was the sixth child and second son of Charles Graves, Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe. His father was an Irish school inspector, Gaelic scholar, and the author of the popular song "Father O'Flynn," and his mother was his father's second wife, Amalie Elisabeth Sophie von Ranke (1857–1951), the niece of the historian Leopold von Ranke.

At the age of seven, double pneumonia following measles almost took Graves's life, the first of three occasions when he was despaired by his doctors as a result of afflictions of the lungs, the second being the result of a war wound, and the third when he contracted Spanish influenza in late 1918, immediately before demobilization. At school, Graves was enrolled as Robert von Ranke Graves, and in Germany, his books are published under that name, but before and during the First World War, the name caused him difficulties.

In August 1916, an officer who disliked him spread the rumor that he was the brother of a captured German spy who had assumed the name "Karl Graves." The problem resurfaced in a minor way in the Second World War when a suspicious rural policeman blocked his appointment to the Special Constabulary. Graves's eldest half-brother, Philip Perceval Graves, achieved success as a journalist and his younger brother, Charles Patrick Graves, was a writer and journalist.

Graves received his early education at a series of six preparatory schools, including King's College School in Wimbledon, Penrallt in Wales, Hillbrow School in Rugby, Rokeby School in Kingston upon Thames, and Copthorne in Sussex, from which last in 1909 he won a scholarship to Charterhouse.[9] There he began to write poetry and took up boxing, in due course becoming school champion at both welters- and middleweight. He claimed that this was in response to persecution because of the German element in his name, his outspokenness, his scholarly and moral seriousness, and his poverty relative to the other boys.

He also sang in the choir, meeting there an aristocratic boy three years younger, G. H. "Peter" Johnstone, with whom he began an intense romantic friendship, the scandal of which led ultimately to an interview with the headmaster. However, Graves himself called it "chaste and sentimental" and "proto-homosexual." Though he was clearly in love with Peter (disguised by the name "Dick" in Goodbye to All That), he denied that their relationship was ever sexual. He was warned about Peter's proclivities by other contemporaries.

Among the masters, his chief influence was George Mallory, who introduced him to contemporary literature and took him mountaineering in the holidays. In his final year at Charterhouse, he won a classical exhibition at St John's College, Oxford, but did not take his place there until after the war.