Robert Graves Letters

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Director of the University Libraries from 1934 to 1960. An authority on modern poetry, he was a prolific book collector and the founder the University’s Twentieth-Century Poetry in English Collection.

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British writer and editor. Starting with the BBC the year after its founding in 1927, he was promoted to literary editor of The Listener, its weekly magazine, where he served for more than two decades. He published many emerging poets and writers who became influential in Great Britain. "I am an old pal of yours"

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Hungarian Communist politician. First Deputy Minister of Culture from 1958 to 1957. Graves had long conversation with him during a trip to Hungary (July 1970): "I found that my invitation to open the Poet’s Congress had come from the big boss Sec-Gen of the Party who had read my works while in prison — he did two long stretches — and with whom I formed an immediate friendship. He lives for poetry, really. And, of course, Socialism."

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Painter and illustrator. Illustrated Laura Riding’s Life of the Dead, and several book jackets for Graves including I, Claudius, Claudius the God, Count Belisarius. Married Lucie Brown (nee Saunders), and then Gretl Cameron (nee Bajardi, Norman Cameron’s widow). Visited Deyá in the 1930's and often after the war and painted many Deyá landscapes. Remained close friend of Graves and his portrait of Graves's is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

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Unidentified correspondent: query probably regarding the surname of someone in Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth. Graves answers: 'In Lord Corwallis' dispatches he appears as ‘Althorpe’ and this is repeated in Broughton Mainwarings History of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.

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American classisist. Editor of Hudson Review and published several articles by Graves. They discuss The Golden Ass.

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Deputy chairman of the Times.

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Wife of John Auerbach (cf.)

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Israeli Sailor, Writer, Lived in a Kibbutz where Robert visted him in his trip to Israel in 1960. Visited Deià.

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British Actress married to Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis (letter of condolence)

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Wilfred Kenyon was an WWI Army officer with the Dorset Regiment who met Graves when both were convalescing at Somerville College, Oxford in March 1917. Kenyon and Graves had a long friendship/correspondence with apparently few mutual friends. Married, Barrett remained in the army and eventually retired as Major. His friendship/correspondence with Graves was truncated by Laura Riding, but resumed in the 1960's. The letters contain significant personal comments.

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Major Archibald Frank Becke was a Major in the Royal Artillery, a noted author on military history, and contributor to the British Official History of the First World War. Letter re T.E.Lawremce

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English art critic. Brief contacts with Graves through Ottoline Morrell during Oxford years. GTAT: "Conscientious objector, looked after the cows on the manor farm"

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American jazz pianist, songwriter, arranger, and composer. Robert stayed with him in New York and Benson-Brooks set a poem of his "Mend them Fences" to music on John Benson Brooks Trio "Avant Slant" Decca DL 75018. Sung by Annie Ross. "Time lists me as top-ranking pop lyricist"

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Artist. 17 years old when she arrived in Deyá about November 1950 (Her mother had a house in nearby Fornalutx). She became part of the family circle, and briefly Graves's muse. Judith published a illustrated book "The Litte Circus" with a foreword by Graves.

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First World War poet: saw continuous action in the front line, between 1916-18. His life-long friend Siegfried Sassoon maintained that Blunden was the ‘poet of the war most lastingly obsessed by it.’ He worked between 1919 and 1970 as a poet, literary editor, journalist, biographer and lecturer, travelling and teaching in England, Japan and Hong Kong. His connections with the Far East spanned from 1924 - 1964. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University in 1966 following Robert Graves's tenure. Extensive correspondence with Graves 1919-1927.

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Wife of poet Edmund Blunden.

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Major Frederick Alexander Colquhoun Boothby. Derick was a member of the first modern WICCAN Coven formed by Gerald Gardner, the Bricket Wood Coven. Later became Scottish nationalist. Interest in The White Goddess and witches.

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Cornish poet. He was praised highly by F.R. Leavis, Anthony Burgess and Martin Seymour-Smith, and deprecated by Ian Hamilton and Martin Amis. Initially a Riding adept (1939) then a personal friend of Graves mostly in Glampton. Graves refuses to be anthologised by him. "Two short poems is not an adequate representation of my work".

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Man of letters of the old school – an adventurous magazine editor and publisher in his youth, a conscientious and perceptive literary critic in his later years. Letter about early books of poets

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British poet. Was Poet Laureate from 1913 until his death im 1930. Met when Graves was at Oxford. Graves asks him for a recommendtion for a job in the USA which he then used for the job in Cairo.

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Friend of Graves’s in Galmpton. - - Six Letters from Robert and Beryl Graves to Joyce Broom - Introduction by Martin Seymour-Smith.; Published in The Rialto Summer 1985, pp 38-44.

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Unidentified - re book about poets juvemilia.

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Mother of Margot Nichols, née Callas

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Scottish-born, English-raised actress and singer. All Music noted that "Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folk song revival – and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax". Frequent visitor to Deia, close friends with the Graves family. Events with Graves included a show with Spike Milligan at the Mermaid Theatre, London. And was in the BBC radio production of Graves's Anger of Achilles

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Widow of Catalan politician Campalans i Puig, then wife of Hubert von Ranke. Visited Deyá in 1934

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Publisher. Published a few of Graves' early books including Lawrence anf the Arabs and Goodbye to All That.

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Establised the The Corvinus Press in 1936. Joined RAF and died during WW2.

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British socialist writer and poet, known for his advocacy of natural living, and for his writings on homosexuality and his open espousal of this identity. British socialist writer and poet, known for his advocacy of natural living, and for his writings on homosexuality and his open espousal of this identity. Among his works are Towards Democracy (1883), Iolaus: An Anthology of Friendship (1908) and The Intermediate Sex (1908). One significant letter from Graves when still at Charterhouse. One significant letter from Graves when still at Charterhouse.

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Spanish writer from Galicia. Lived in Mallorca in the 1950's and edited a magazine Papeles de Son Armadans. Organized a prize for Poetry at Formentor, Mallorca, which Graves attended one day. Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989. Graves tried to get him to help protect Deya from overbuilding.

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Richard Thomas Church CBE was an English writer, poet and critic; he also wrote novels and verse plays, and three volumes of autobiography.

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American librarian, literary critic, bibliographer and author of more than 100 books

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Née Graves, Roz was RG’s elder sister and closest family member. Studied Royal College of Music. In 1917 joined the V.A.D as a nurse attached to the 54 London General Hospital B.E.F (Near Boulogne). Published WW1 poet. Later studied medicine and practised as a GP in Bishopsteignton, near Teignmouth, Devon most of her working life. Robert settled in Devon, to be near her, after his break with Riding and the beginning of his life with the then Beryl Hodge.

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Writer who achieved fame with his short stories depicting the English rural scene and its characters. Probaly played soccer with Graves at Islip. (postcard & note) "Stanton matches are not the same without you"

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Critic, journalist, translator, editor, novelist, poet, playwright — Cournos fulfilled all these writerly posts with distinction, .. Letter re. contribution to Winter Owl 1922

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Journalist. Married to RG’s eldest daughter, Jenny Nicholson (cf.), Patrick Crosse, born in Rhodesia, was an outstanding journalist and news manager, and held in high esteem by all those who worked with him during his 36 years with Reuters. He made important contributions to the development of Reuters' reputation for authoritative, unbiased and responsible news-gathering around the world and assisted many newly independent countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to establish their own news-gathering capabilities. Patrick married Jenny after the death of her first husband, Alexander Clifford, the 2nd World War Correspondent; and then outlived her after her early and tragic death.

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James Cuchiara was in the Vanguard of the Artists Exhibiting in their Studios in the 1960’s and 1970’s, in New York City’s Artist-neighbour groups in the Soho area. Part of Laracuen's friend.

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British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. Nancy became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists. She owned the Hours Press in Paris and printed both Graves's Ten Poems More and Riding's Twenty Poems Less with cover boards by Len Lye. Later Nancy Cunard owned the Creative Age Press, New York, and published American editions of Graves's King Jesus, The White Goddess, Watch the North Wind Rise, and Occupation Writer, after which the press was taken over by Doubleday. She visited Graves in Deya in 1948.

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RG’s second daughter with N.Nicholson. Married New Zealand nuclear scientist Clifford Dalton. Lived in Australia. Wrote (subsidized by Graves) "Without Hardware" published 1970 about cases of treason in Australia . In 1998 she publised "Robert Graves Against the Gannon Cult" in which she documents how she "Investigates unreprted episodes the powerful and mysterious Gannon Cult." Four children: David, Caroline, Antonia and Margaret.

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British biologist. Article on "Genetic Component of Language" which Graves read and comments on in the sole letter.