Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940–1985; Robert Graves: Life on the Edge; Robert Graves: Collected Writings on Poetry

This chapter evaluates three publications regarding Robert Graves. For any biographer of Graves the problem is to reconcile two beings: the old-fashioned, chivalrous Englishman and the crazy magician. His nephew R.P. Graves has laboured for ten years to clarify this, drawing on a vast archive of family papers. Robert Graves and the White Goddess triumphantly concludes a trilogy that embeds Graves's life in a microcosm of English social history. Miranda Seymour's Robert Graves: Life on the Edge is slighter, but sharper in focus. No one, she claims, has examined Graves's relations with women in any detail. The chapter then looks at three things that shaped Graves: his mother, Amalia von Ranke; the Great War; and the young American poet Laura Riding. It also considers Robert Graves: Collected Writings on Poetry, edited by Paul O'Prey.