Some Speculations on Literature, History and Religion
Mycology, psycho-analysis, music, mythology, linguistics, Christianity, occultism, Majorca, esoterica... This book for the first time selects the best from the more than five hundred essays which Robert Graves wrote about areas of culture which engaged him. His critical diversity illustrates his eclectic interests and his dazzling genius in making connections. He engages every kind of reader; whether we agree or disagree, and he sharpens our own critical skills even as he informs and entertains us.
His first journal article was written in 1913. He was seventeen. It was a critique of popular music entitled "Ragtime", published in the Charterhouse school magazine "The Greyfriar". A lifetime later, his final published essay was fittingly called "All Things to All Men" and published in 1977 in "Malahat Review". For sixty-four years of a turbulent century Graves trained a wary eye, passionately and wryly, on social and political change, popular culture, religion and economics. His range and creative originality set him in a class of his own.
Many of these essays evolved out of Graves' literary pursuits and cast light on his poetry and fiction.
About the Author
Robert Graves (1895-1985), poet, classical scholar, novelist, and critic, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century. Athough he produced over 100 books he is perhaps best known for the novel "I, Claudius" (1934), "The White Goddess" (1948) and "Greek Myths" (1955).
Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon, South London. His father, Alfred Percival Graves, was a school inspector, and his mother, Amalie von Ranke Graves, was a great-niece of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1866). He was educated at Charterhouse, and awarded a B. Litt by St. John's College, Oxford after his return from World war I, where he served alsongside Siegfried Sassoon.
Robert Graves died in 1985 in Deja, the Majorcan village he had made his home (with the exception of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War) since 1929.
