The writer and poet Robert Graves suppressed virtually all 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" seems to have depended mainly on his prose memoir
Goodbye to All That
. None of the previous biographies written on Graves attempt to deal with this paradox in any depth. The suppressed poems themselves have been largely neglected—until now.
Jean Moorcroft Wilson, celebrated biographer of Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas, relates Graves' fascinating life during the period from his birth up until the early 1930s: his experiences in the war, his being left for dead at the Battle of the Somme, his move to Spain, and his final "goodbye" to Sassoon in 1933. In this deeply-researched new book, containing startling archival material never previously revealed and little-studied poems, Moorcroft Wilson traces how Graves' compelling life informed the development of his poetry during the First World War, his thinking about the conflict and his shifting attitude towards it. This illuminating look at Graves' life and poetic work reaffirms his place among the important poets of the Great War.
Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Goodbye to All That
casts new light on the life, prose and poetry of Graves, without which the story of Great War Poetry is incomplete.