Robert Graves  (1895–1985) LINKS Robert Graves: Trust, Society, and Journal http://www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/graves/graves.html This official Robert Graves site is very comprehensive, including reprints of his work and of his biography, photographs of his dust jackets, information about the Society and Journal, and opportunities to purchase his work. The Robert Graves Archive http://homes.ukoln.ac.uk/~lispjh/graves/ This site provides its viewers with work by and about Graves, audio and video clips of Graves reading his poems, and a very up-to-date page on Graves’s most recent activities and writings. BIOGRAPHY Graves was born in London, son of an Irish poet. He served in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers during World War I and rose to the rank of captain. He studied at Oxford and in 1926 was professor of English literature at Cairo University. In 1929, he left his wife and four children to live in Mallorca, Spain, with Laura Riding, an American poet. Controversial in both his personal life and his work, Graves aroused indignation with his translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, which departed markedly from the popular Edward Fitzgerald translation (1859). During the late 1950s and 1960s, he taught at Oxford and lectured in the United States. Goodbye to All That (1929), his early autobiography, provides a nice insight into the culture that nourished him. Among his numerous works are the influential “historical grammar of poetic myth,” The White Goddess (1948, 1952), and the historical novels I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1934).