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Robert Graves (1895 - 1985)

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  • Robert Graves (1895-1985), poet, classical scholar, novelist, and critic, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. Athough he produced over 100 books he is perhaps best known for the novel I, Claudius (1934),The White Goddess (1948) and Greek Myths (1955).

    Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon, South London. His father, Alfred Percival Graves, was a school inspector, and his mother, Amalie von Ranke Graves, was a great-niece of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1866). He was educated at Charterhouse, and awarded a B.Litt by St. John's College, Oxford after his return from World war I, where he served alsongside Siegfried Sassoon.

    Robert Graves died in 1985 in Deja, the Majorcan village he had made his home (with the exception of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War) since 1929.
       
       
       
       
    Praise for Robert Graves (1895 - 1985)  'While poetry schools came and went, Graves went on writing until his death in 1985, in an elegant, classically inspired style.'
    Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday 07/01/01
     'No one else offers his precise combination of eroticism, nightmare and epigram.'
    Sean O'Brien, The Guardian 13/01/01
     'Graves experiences in the trenches of the First World War are most vivid and moving.'
    Robert Nye, Scotsman on Sunday, 16/12/00
     'In his attitude to verse he remained a Georgian, an eccentric one.'
    Eric Hester, Catholic Times 20/02/00
     'Graves enshrines his archetypal motifs of obsessive love in legendary contexts from which the contemporary world is resolutely excluded.'
    Mark Ford, The London Review of Books
     'One of the twentieth century's major writers.'
    Richard Foster, Yorkshire Evening Press
     Graves is a poet and a visionary in his prose writings, always stimulating and frequently enlightening.
    Patrick Reilly, The Herald
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