Robert Graves Robert von Ranke Graves ( also known as Robert Ranke Graves and most commonly Robert Graves ) ( 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 ) was an English poet , scholar / translator / writer of antiquity specializing in Classical Greece and Rome , and novelist . During his long life he produced more than 140 works . Graves ' s poems — together with his translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths , his memoir of his early life , including his role in the First World War , " Good - Bye to All That " , and his speculative study of poetic inspiration , " The White Goddess " — have never been out of print . 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 today for their clarity and entertaining style . Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both " I , Claudius " and " Claudius the God " . Biography . Early life . Graves was born into a middle - class family in Wimbledon in south London . He was the third of five children born to Alfred Perceval Graves ( 1846 – 1931 ) , a school inspector , Gaelic scholar , and the author of the popular song " Father O ' Flynn " , and his second wife , Amalie von Ranke ( 1857 – 1951 ) . Graves ' s mother was from a recently - ennobled German family , the eldest daughter of Heinrich Ranke , professor of medicine at the University of Munich , and his wife , Luise Tiarks . She was also a great - niece of the German 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 given up by his doctors as a result of afflictions of the lungs ; the second being the result of a war - wound ( see below ) , and the third when he contracted Spanish influenza in late 1918 immediately before demobilisation . 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 rumour that he was a spy ; a brother to a captured German spy who had coincidentally taken the name Carl 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 note as a journalist , and his younger brother Charles Patrick Graves was a writer and journalist . Education . Graves received his early education at a series of six preparatory school s , including King ' s College School in Wimbledon , Penrallt in Wales , Hillbrow School in Rugby , Rokeby School in Kingston upon Thames and Copthorne in West Sussex , from which last in 1909 he won a scholarship to Charterhouse . There , in response to persecution — due to the German element in his name , his outspokenness , his scholarly and moral seriousness , and poverty relative to the other boys — he feigned madness , began to write poetry , and took up boxing , in due course becoming school champion at both welter - and middleweight . 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 . Among the masters his chief influence was George Mallory , who introduced him to contemporary literature and took him mountaineering in vacations . In his final year at Charterhouse he won a classical exhibition to St John ' s College , Oxford , but did not take his place there until after the war . First World War . At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 , Graves enlisted almost immediately , taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers . He published his first volume of poems , " Over the Brazier " , in 1916 . He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about experience of front - line conflict . In later years , he omitted his war poems from his collections , on the grounds that they were too obviously " part of the war poetry boom " . At the Battle of the Somme , he was so badly wounded by a shell - fragment through the lung that he was expected to die and was officially reported as having died of wounds . He gradually recovered , and apart from a brief spell back in France , spent the remainder of the war in England . One of Graves ' s close friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon , a fellow officer in his regiment . In 1917 , Sassoon rebelled against the conduct of the war by making a public anti - war statement . Graves feared Sassoon could face a court martial and intervened with the military authorities , persuading them that Sassoon was suffering from shell shock and that they should treat him accordingly . As a result Sassoon was sent to Craiglockhart , a military hospital near Edinburgh , where he was treated by Dr . W . H . R . Rivers and met fellow patient Wilfred Owen . Graves also suffered from shell shock , or neurasthenia as it was officially called , although he was never hospitalised for it : I thought of going back to France , but realised the absurdity of the notion . Since 1916 , the fear of gas obsessed me : any unusual smell , even a sudden strong smell of flowers in a garden , was enough to send me trembling . And I couldn ' t face the sound of heavy shelling now ; the noise of a car back - firing would send me flat on my face , or running for cover . The friendship between Graves and Sassoon is documented in Graves ' s letters and biographies , and the story is fictionalised in Pat Barker ' s novel " Regeneration " . The intensity of their early relationship is demonstrated in Graves ' s collection " Fairies and Fusiliers " ( 1917 ) , which contains many poems celebrating their friendship . Sassoon himself remarked upon a " heavy sexual element " within it , an observation supported by the sentimental nature of much of the surviving correspondence between the two men . Through Sassoon , Graves became a friend of Wilfred Owen , " who often used to send me poems from France . " Graves ' s army career ended dramatically with an incident which could have led to a charge of desertion . Having been posted to Limerick in late 1918 , he " woke up with a sudden chill , which I recognized as the first symptoms of Spanish influenza . " " I decided to make a run for it , " he wrote , " I should at least have my influenza in an English , and not an Irish , hospital . " Arriving at Waterloo with a high fever but without the official papers that would secure his release from the army , he chanced to share a taxi with a demobilisation officer also returning from Ireland , who completed his papers for him with the necessary secret codes . Post - war period . Immediately post - war , Graves had a wife and growing family , but was financially insecure , and weakened physically and mentally : In October 1919 he took up his place at Oxford , soon changing course to English Language and Literature , though managing to retain his Classics exhibition . In consideration of his health he was permitted to live a little outside Oxford , on Boars Hill , where the residents included Robert Bridges , John Masefield his landlord , Edmund Blunden , Gilbert Murray , and Robert Nichols . Later the family moved to Worlds End Cottage on Collice Street , Islip , Oxfordshire . His most notable Oxford companion was T . E . Lawrence , then a Fellow of All Souls , with whom he discussed contemporary poetry and shared in the planning of elaborate pranks . He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop , but the business soon failed . In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University , accompanied by his wife , their children , and the poet Laura Riding . He returned to London briefly , where he split up with his wife under highly emotional circumstances ( at one point Riding attempted suicide ) before leaving to live with Riding in Deià , Majorca . There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press , founded and edited the literary journal , " Epilogue " ; they also wrote two successful academic books together : " A Survey of Modernist Poetry " ( 1927 ) and " A Pamphlet Against Anthologies " ( 1928 ) ; both had great influence on modern literary criticism , particularly new criticism . Literary career . In 1927 also , he published " Lawrence and the Arabs " , a commercially successful biography of T . E . Lawrence . The autobiographical " Good - bye to All That " ( 1929 , revised by him and republished in 1957 ) proved a success but cost him many of his friends , notably Siegfried Sassoon . In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work , " I , Claudius " . Using classical sources he constructed a complex and compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius , a tale extended in the sequel " Claudius the God " ( 1935 ) . Another historical novel by Graves , " Count Belisarius " ( 1938 ) , recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius . 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 . Their volatile relationship was described by Robert ' s nephew Richard Perceval Graves in " Robert Graves : 1927 – 1940 : the Years with Laura " , and T . S . Matthews ' s " Jacks or Better " ( 1977 ) . It was also the basis for Miranda Seymour ' s novel " The Summer of ' 39 " ( 1998 ) . After returning to England , Graves began a relationship with Beryl Hodge , then the wife of Alan Hodge , his collaborator on " The Long Week - End " ( 1941 ) and " The Reader Over Your Shoulder " ( 1943 ; republished in 1947 as " The Use and Abuse of the English Language " but subsequently republished several times under its original title ) . In 1946 he and his new wife Beryl re - established a home in Deià , Majorca . The house is now a museum . 1946 also saw the publication of the historical novel , " King Jesus " . He published " The White Goddess " in 1948 . He turned to science fiction with " Seven Days in New Crete " ( 1949 ) , and in 1953 he published " The Nazarene Gospel Restored " with Joshua Podro . In 1955 , he published " The Greek Myths " , containing translations and interpretations . His translations are well respected and continue to dominate the English - language market for mythography . Many of his unconventional interpretations and etymologies are dismissed by classicists , but have provoked more research into the topics he raised . Graves in turn dismissed the reactions of classical scholars , arguing that they are too specialized and " prose - minded " to interpret " ancient poetic meaning " , and that " the few independent thinkers . . . [ are ] . . . the poets , who try to keep civilization alive . " He published a volume of short stories , " Catacrok ! Mostly Stories , Mostly Funny " , in 1956 . In 1961 he became Professor of Poetry at Oxford , a post he held until 1966 . In 1967 , Robert Graves published , together with Omar Ali - Shah , a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam . The translation quickly became controversial ; Graves was attacked for trying to break the spell of famed passages in Edward FitzGerald ' s Victorian translation , and L . P . Elwell - Sutton , an orientalist at Edinburgh University , maintained that the manuscript used by Ali - Shah and Graves — which Ali - Shah and his brother Idries Shah claimed had been in their family for 800 years — was a forgery . The translation was a critical disaster , and Graves ' s reputation suffered severely due to what the public perceived as his gullibility in falling for the Shah brothers ' deception . From the 1960s until his death , Robert Graves frequently exchanged letters with Spike Milligan . Many of their letters to each other are collected in the book , " Dear Robert , Dear Spike " . On 11 November 1985 , Graves was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey ' s Poet ' s Corner . The inscription on the stone was written by friend and fellow Great War poet Wilfred Owen . It reads : " My subject is War , and the pity of War . The Poetry is in the pity . " Of the 16 poets , Graves was the only one still living at the time of the commemoration ceremony . UK government documents released in 2012 indicate that Graves turned down a CBE in 1957 . In 2012 , the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years and it was revealed that Graves was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature , along with John Steinbeck ( winner ) , Lawrence Durrell , Jean Anouilh and Karen Blixen . 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 . Death . During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss , and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life . By this time he had published more than 140 works . He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart failure on 7 December 1985 aged 90 . He was buried the next morning in the small churchyard on a hill at Deià , on the site of a shrine which had once been sacred to The White Goddess of Pelion . His second wife , Beryl Graves , died on 27 October 2003 and was buried with him . Memorials . His former house in Wimbledon , has a blue plaque on it , as does his former house in Brixham . Children . Robert Graves had eight children . With his first wife Nancy Nicholson he had Jennie ( who married journalist Alexander Clifford ) , David ( who was killed in the Second World War ) , Catherine ( who married nuclear scientist Clifford Dalton ) , and Sam . With his second wife , Beryl Graves ( 1915 – 2003 ) , he had William , Lucia ( also a translator ) , Juan and Tomás ( a writer and musician ) .