First World War.com - Prose & Poetry

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Robert Graves Prose & Poetry - Robert Graves
Updated - Saturday, 11 August, 2001

Robert Graves (1895-1985), was born in Wimbledon in July 1895.

A poet, novelist, critic and classical scholar, he published over 120 volumes encompassing a wide variety of fields, including historical fiction, mythology, poetry - and a classic memoir of the First World War, Good-bye To All That (1929).

Graves began to write poetry whilst a student at London's Charterhouse School, an interest continued throughout his life and most notably during his wartime service. In 1916-17 alone he published three volumes of verse.

Following the war, in which he was seriously wounded in 1916 whilst serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, and the publication of his highly successful memoir (which caused a rift between Graves and Siegfried Sassoon), Graves spent a period teaching in Cairo.

Following this Graves settled in Majorca, continuing his writing career with such successful titles as I, Claudius and Claudius The God (both 1934), later successfully dramatised by the BBC.

Graves was elected professor of poetry at Oxford University in 1961, where he remained until 1966.

Of the other renowned war poets, Graves struck up friendships with Nichols, Owen and Sassoon.

Married twice, to first Nancy Nicholson and then Beryl Pritchard, Robert Graves died in Deja, Majorca, on 7 December 1985.

Feature: Robert Graves: A Twentieth Century Life

During the war 1,200 French churches were destroyed. 300,000 houses were also lost.