Robert Graves - by Jean Moorcroft Wilson (Paperback)

About the Book

This revelatory biography of Robert Graves re-examines his position as a major First World War poet, as well as a master prose writer.

Book Synopsis

'An exemplary biography' -- Sunday Times
'Commanding' - Observer
'Diligent and insightful' - The Times

This revelatory biography of Robert Graves re-examines his position as a major First World War poet, as well as a master prose writer.

The writer and poet Robert Graves suppressed virtually all of the poems he had published during and just after the First World War. Until his son, William Graves, reprinted almost all the Poems About War in 1988, Graves's status as a 'war poet' depended mainly on his prose memoir, Good-bye to All That.

In this exemplary biography, Jean Moorcroft Wilson relates Graves's fascinating early life, his experiences in the war, his being left for dead at the Battle of the Somme, his leap from a third-storey window after his lover Laura Riding's even more dramatic jump from the fourth storey, his move to Spain and his final 'goodbye' to 'all that'.

Containing startling new archival material about the breakdown of the friendship between Robert Graves and the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, including photographs, Dr Moorcroft Wilson traces not only Graves's compelling life, but also the development of his poetry during the First World War, his thinking about the conflict and his shifting attitude towards it.

Review Quotes

"Commanding ... To encounter [Graves] in these pages is to feel something of the relentlessly explosive energy with which he lived the first half of his life. Wilson lands him like a Zeppelin bomb." --Observer

"This study of the devastating impact of the conflict on Graves makes for compelling reading. I cannot recommend it too highly." --Nigel Jones, author of Rupert Brooke: Life, Death & Myth

"Diligent and insightful." --The Times

"Wilson unveils the poet behind the man struggling to make, not write, poetry [and] clarifies our understanding of what Graves was about." --Literary Review

"Consistently illuminating." --Andrew Motion, Spectator

"A sensitive rendering of the poet's formative years ... finely nuanced." --Kirkus Reviews

"A fine attempt to give Graves his due in the context of the Great War." --Evening Standard

"This is an exemplary biography and a terrific entertainment ... Wilson brings this difficult, unlovable but strangely impressive man yelpingly to life." --Sunday Times

"Readable and absorbing." --TLS

"Deft and commanding ... On a par with her other outstanding biographies." --BBC History Magazine

"Measured and dispassionate ... This is biography at its best." --Country Life

"A well-researched, readable biography." --Library Journal

"Anyone reading this book will come away with a fresh, and deeper, understanding of Graves and his writing - even if they have read previous biographies [...] There is no doubt that in many ways Jean Moorcroft Wilson has outdone her predecessors." --PN Review

About the Author

Jean Moorcroft Wilson is a celebrated biographer and leading expert on the First World War poets. Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper biography prize for her Isaac Rosenberg, she has also written biographies of Siegfried Sassoon, Charles Hamilton Sorley and Edward Thomas. She has lectured for many years at the University of London, as well as in the United States and South Africa.