Captain Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, historical novelist and critic.
42 Facts About Robert Graves
2.
Robert Graves's father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology.
3.
Robert Graves is a renowned short story writer, with stories such as "The Tenement" still being popular today.
4.
Robert Graves earned his living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as I, Claudius; King Jesus; The Golden Fleece; and Count Belisarius.
5.
Robert Graves 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.
6.
Robert Graves was born into a middle-class family in Wimbledon, then part of Surrey, now part of south London.
7.
Robert Graves was the third of five children born to Alfred Perceval Graves, who was the sixth child and second son of Charles Graves, Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe.
8.
Robert Graves's 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, the niece of the historian Leopold von Ranke.
9.
Robert 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.
10.
Robert Graves 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.
11.
Robert Graves was warned about Peter's proclivities by other contemporaries.
12.
At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Robert Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant on 12 August.
13.
Robert Graves published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916.
14.
Robert Graves developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about the experience of frontline conflict.
15.
Robert Graves gradually recovered and, apart from a brief spell back in France, spent the remainder of the war in England.
16.
At Somerville College, Robert Graves met and fell in love with Marjorie, a nurse and professional pianist, but stopped writing to her once he learned she was engaged.
17.
Robert Graves feared Sassoon could face a court martial and intervened with the military authorities, persuading them that Sassoon was experiencing shell shock and that they should treat him accordingly.
18.
Robert Graves had shell shock, or neurasthenia as it was then called, but he was never hospitalised for it:.
19.
In September 1917, Robert Graves was seconded for duty with a garrison battalion.
20.
Robert Graves's work was part of the literature event in the art competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics.
21.
Robert Graves failed his BA degree but was exceptionally permitted to take a Bachelor of Letters by dissertation instead, allowing him to pursue a teaching career.
22.
Robert Graves later claimed that one of his pupils at the university was a young Gamal Abdel Nasser.
23.
Robert Graves returned to London briefly, where he separated from his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deia, Majorca.
24.
Robert Graves and Riding left Majorca in 1936 at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and in 1939, they moved to the United States, taking lodging in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
25.
Robert Graves published The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth in 1948; it is a study of the nature of poetic inspiration, interpreted in terms of the classical and Celtic mythology he knew so well.
26.
Robert Graves turned to science fiction with Seven Days in New Crete and in 1953 he published The Nazarene Gospel Restored with Joshua Podro.
27.
Robert Graves wrote Hercules, My Shipmate, published under that name in 1945.
28.
Robert Graves's retellings are well respected; many of his unconventional interpretations and etymologies are dismissed by classicists.
29.
In 1967, Robert Graves published, together with Omar Ali-Shah, a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
30.
Elwell-Sutton, an orientalist at Edinburgh University, maintained that the manuscript used by Ali-Shah and Robert Graves, which Ali-Shah and his brother Idries Shah claimed had been in their family for 800 years, was a forgery.
31.
The translation was a critical disaster and Robert Graves's reputation suffered severely due to what the public perceived as his gullibility in falling for the Shah brothers' deception.
32.
In 1968, Robert Graves was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry by Queen Elizabeth II.
33.
On 11 November 1985, Robert Graves was among sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.
34.
UK government documents released in 2012 indicate that Robert Graves turned down a CBE in 1957.
35.
In 2012, the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years, and it was revealed that Robert Graves was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with John Steinbeck, Lawrence Durrell, Jean Anouilh and Karen Blixen.
36.
Robert Graves was rejected because, even though he had written several historical novels, he was still primarily seen as a poet, and committee member Henry Olsson was reluctant to award any Anglo-Saxon poet the prize before the death of Ezra Pound, believing that other writers did not match his talent.
37.
In 1917, Robert Graves met Marjorie Machin, an auxiliary nurse from Kent.
38.
Robert Graves admired her "direct manner and practical approach to life".
39.
Robert Graves did not pursue the relationship when he realised Machin had a fiance on the Front.
40.
When Phibbs attempted to leave the relationship, Robert Graves was sent to track him down, even threatening to kill Phibbs if he did not return to the circle.
41.
When Phibbs resisted, Riding threw herself out of a window, with Robert Graves following suit to reach her.
42.
Robert Graves's body was buried the next morning in the small churchyard on a hill at Deia, at the site of a shrine that had once been sacred to the White Goddess of Pelion.