Robert Graves

British poet and novelist Robert Graves was born Robert von Ranke Graves in London, England, in 1895. He began to write poetry while a student at London's Charterhouse School, and even while serving as an officer in the British army during World War I he kept at it, turning out three books of poetry in 1916 and 1917 while posted to the western front, where he was seriously wounded in 1916. His war experiences resulted in his well-received autobiography, "Goodbye to All That", in 1919. They also contributed to a long spell of mental problems in the 1920s, culminating in his divorce in that same period. In 1929 he moved to Majorca, Spain, with an American poet he had met, Laura Riding, and the two were together for almost 15 years. In 1934 he wrote what is his most famous novel, "I, Claudius", a first-person narrative "written" by the Roman emperor Claudius, chronicling life during the reigns of Augustus, Tiberias and the notorious Caligula. Other historical novels followed, including "Claudius the God" (1934), "Count Belisarius" (1936) and 1944's "The Golden Fleece" (aka "Hercules, My Shipmate"). It was while conducting research for this novel that Graves became interested in mythology, resulting in what is arguably his most controversial work, "The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth" in 1948. That same year he published his "Collected Poems", which he subsequently revised over the years, and turned out a translation of "The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam" in 1967. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University in 1961, and stayed there until 1966. He died in Majorca, Spain, in 1985.