CONTRIBUTORS GRAVESIANA GRAVESIANA The Journal of the Robert Graves Society Norman Austin THE JOURNAL SOCIETY GRAVES OF THE ROBERT Joseph Bailey ISSN xxxx-xxxx Matthew Betts Peter G. Christensen Lucia Graves Dominic Hibberd Mark Jacobs Frank Kersnowski Anne Mounic John Woodrow Presley Philip Stewart Dunstan Ward EricWebb Cover image by Karl Goldscmidt from the 1948 edition of The White Goddess SUPPORTED BY State University of Universit at De S t John s College N e w Y ork at Buffalo Les Illes Balears Oxford VOLUME III NUMBER II 2010 2010 £17 GBP €25 EUR $30 USD Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society Submission and Contact Information Editor Dunstan Ward formerly University of London Institute in Paris, 1. As from this 2010 issue, Gravesiana is published annually online as France Associate Editors an electronic journal (see inside front cover for subscription informa- Lucia Graves Writer and Translator, London, UK tion and further details). Patrick Villa formerly University of Bristol, UK Founding Editor 2. Articles should be word-processed, using MS Word if possible. Patrick Quinn Chapman University, Orange, California, USA Editorial Board 3. References should follow the MHRA system; see Modern Robert Bertholf formerly State University of New York at Buffalo, USA Humanities Research Association Style Guide: A Handbook for Fran Brearton Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland Authors, Editors, and Writers of Theses, second edition (2008), avail- Robert Davis University of Glasgow, Scotland able for download free of charge as a PDF file. First references to a Joan Miquel Fiol University of the Balearic Islands, Mallorca, Spain Carl Hahn Bibliographer and Book Collector, Clarksville, book, article, or other publication should be given in full in an endnote. Maryland, USA Endnotes should, however, be kept to a minimum, and as far as possi- Michael Irwin University of Kent, Canterbury, UK John Kelly St John’s College, Oxford, UK ble references should be incorporated into the text. Subsequent refer- Alice Hughes ences should be given in the shortest easily identifiable form, prefer- Kersnowski St Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas, USA Frank Kersnowski Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, USA ably in parentheses within the text (see the MHRA Style Guide, 11). Grevel Lindop formerly University of Manchester, UK For other points, see also the Gravesiana Style Guide (Version 4, Patrick McGuinness St Anne’s College, Oxford, UK Paul O’Prey Roehampton University, London, UK August 2010) at www.robertgraves.org. John Woodrow Presley Illinois State University, USA Juana María Seguí University of the Balearic Islands, Mallorca, Spain 4. Articles may include endnotes produced by MS Word’s automated utility for this. Otherwise text should be marked up as little as possible. © Robert Graves Society or authors, 2010 ISSN xxxx-xxxx For example, please do not number pages or create headers or footers. Where an article uses non-roman scripts or characters, please indicate where the necessary fonts can be found, free of copyright, or supply From 2010, Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society will be published annual- ly online as an electronic journal. Subscriptions are available at £17 (GBP), $30 (USD), or them with the article. €25 (Euros). These prices include access to the electronic journal and a year’s membership of the Robert Graves Society. All cheques should be made payable to The Robert Graves 5. All items, including critical and biographical studies, reviews and Society and sent to: news items, should preferably be sent as an e-mail attachment (please Patrick Villa Secretary/Treasurer include an electronic copy on disc if sending by post) to: Robert Graves Society 50 Ham Green Pill Dunstan Ward Bristol 3, rue des Grands Augustins BS20 0HB UK 75006 Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] Cheques MUST be in GB Pounds Sterling, US Dollars or Euros. It is also possible to pay via PayPal or bank transfer. Please see www.robertgraves.org/iana for further details. 6. All contributors will receive access to the electronic edition of the journal. Contents Editorial Editorial statement 163 Editorial 164 Dunstan Ward Obituaries Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) 168 A Personal Memory Lucia Graves Colin Wells (1933–2010) 172 In Memory and in Celebration of Colin Wells Frank Kersnowski Colin Allen (1929–2010) 176 Remembering Colin Allen Joseph Bailey Features An Unrecorded WWI Publication by Robert Graves 179 Eric Webb Graves and the Grocery 205 Philip Stewart 162 GRAVESIANA: THE JOURNAL OF THE ROBERT GRAVES SOCIETY Critical Studies Robert Graves and the Scholars 211 Norman Austin The Claudius Novels and Imperial Family Melodrama 235 Peter G. Christensen ‘You may not believe it, for hardly could I’: Robert Graves and the Bible 251 Anne Mounic A ‘Spirit Above Wars’: Robert Graves’s Self-Portrait as Soldier and Poet, 1915–29 290 Dominic Hibberd Sources, Collaborators, and Critique in Antigua, Penny, Puce 309 John Woodrow Presley Laura (Riding) Jackson and Robert Graves: The Question of Collaboration 331 Mark Jacobs One Story and One Story Only: Robert Graves’s American Reputation 348 John Woodrow Presley Review Robert Graves: A Life by Bruce King 370 Matthew Betts Editorial statement Gravesiana is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes scholarly articles concerning Robert Graves and members of his circle. It also contains reviews of the latest studies about Graves and those connected with him or the subjects of his works. There are biographical articles which aim to highlight Graves‟s personal relationship with various literary and other contemporaries, as well as providing personal glimpses of the man behind the poetry, fiction, mythography, scholarship and criticism. The journal is also the publication of the Robert Graves Society and contains information concerning the society‟s activities, including conferences, lectures and other events of interest to those engaged in Graves studies. Gravesiana is now available as an electronic journal (at www.robertgraves.org/iana) and welcomes submissions from all who read its pages: the intention is that it should be a lively and intellectually challenging journal that in some degree reflects the protean spirit of the man to whom it is dedicated. Editorial Dunstan Ward This is the first electronic issue of Gravesiana. Following discussion over several years, the decision to go online was finally taken at the meeting of Robert Graves Society during the 2008 Robert Graves Conference at Oxford. One major advantage is accessibility. In his article on Graves‟s American reputation John Woodrow Presley, Vice-President (Americas) of the Robert Graves Society, „applaud[s] the society‟s growing reliance on the internet. All that can be done […] to help Graves scholarship more rapidly appear in print (especially on the internet) should be undertaken.‟ Online publication should also help solve the problems which have beset the journal, causing delays in the appearance of several issues, including this one: we owe apologies to our readers and gratitude for maintaining their commitment to this vital forum for Graves studies. Past history and hostages to fortune notwithstanding, our aim is to bring out the journal on time every year. This Gravesiana is a „first‟ in other ways. It features a hitherto unrecorded „letter from the front‟ which Robert Graves sent in 1915 to his old school magazine, The Carthusian. Eric Webb convincingly identifies Graves as the anonymous author of „Is my Team Ploughing…?‟. He suggests that it is really a letter to „Dick‟, the younger schoolmate whom Graves loved, and, moreover, „an apologia pro vita sua on the eve of battle‟. Another discovery is the exact site of the shop that Robert Graves and Nancy Nicholson ran on Boars Hill, five miles from Oxford, in 1919–21. Philip Stewart‟s account of his researches is illustrated by the shop sign „almost certainly‟ painted by Nancy Nicholson, the report in the Daily Mirror, and a view of the spot where the shop stood. Dominic Hibberd‟s article in the „Critical Studies‟ section is ground-breaking in a different sense. It reveals the extent to which Editorial 165 Goodbye to All That re-invented in 1929 the Robert Graves of the wartime letters and poems, and how different his earlier attitudes were both to the war and to poetry about it. The much-quoted episode in Goodbye when Graves tells Sassoon that he will change his style after he has been in the trenches is just one of the numerous points where Dominic Hibberd sets the record straight. The articles by Eric Webb and Dominic Hibberd are among several in this issue that might be considered to answer the plea of a speaker at the 2008 Oxford meeting for Graves criticism that eschews „hagiography‟. Norman Austin dissects with forensic precision Graves‟s modus operandi in The Greek Myths. However, far from merely doing a hatchet job (like an infuriated academic a few years ago in the TLS), Professor Austin demonstrates both the weaknesses and the strengths of the work. And he even concludes that „Graves himself would be astonished to discover how deeply the Goddess theory has infiltrated into the Academy‟. Nonetheless, in American universities John Woodrow Presley finds that there is an alarming lack of interest in Robert Graves‟s work. Among a multiplicity of factors that Professor Presley examines is the low rating accorded to Graves‟s work by those academic equivalents of Standard & Poor‟s, the Norton Anthology and its predecessor, the Untermeyer anthology in its successive editions. There has been, too, the aggressive campaign conducted by Laura Riding and her followers during her lifetime and since. The Graves-Riding collaboration, the subject of two articles in the last Gravesiana,1 is in this issue viewed from the „other side‟ by Mark Jacobs. Any hagiographical risk inherent in her theme is surely avoided in Anne Mounic‟s luminous study of the connections between Robert Graves‟s work and the Bible.