There are no complete prose works currently available on the Web. There are however sites which make extracts available, either as free-standing text (Goodbye to All That), or in the body of another text. There are also some good plot summaries available. The extensive extracts from 'Goodbye to All That' available in Stuart Lee's hypertext tutorial on Isaac Rosenberg were cleared for copyright with the literary agents for the Graves Estate (A.P. Watt). Audio and Video clips from adaptations of 'I, Claudius' became available in 1999 (location given below). Some reviews are also listed here.
- I Claudius. Unquestionably the best Claudius site available. Contains all the relevant primary sources used by Graves: Dio Cassius, Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, etc; in both Latin and English, displayed via hyperlinked chronological charts. Excellent for teachers who wish to take a class through Graves' creative process, and for those interested in the precision of Graves' historical scholarship. Both the layout and the graphical presentation of the site are first class, and a model of how it should be done on the web. This was a project put together by St Anselm College, New Hampshire, and mounted in January 1999. Not well indexed on the web however, so more or less invisible until now. Uses frames and multiple browser windows. [linked 8th Aug 1999]
NB: There are now audio and video clips available, useful in conjunction with this and the other 'I, Claudius' sites listed on this page. There is also a page of Graves criticism elsewhere on this site, which links to a review of Graves' translation of Suetonius by Gore Vidal (1958).
I Claudius. Based on the BBC television series of 1976. This was the best set of Graves-related pages widely available in January 1999: an outstanding job with a clean layout and excellent graphics. Designed as an educational tool with lots of useful information. Good plot summaries.
[First linked 4th January 1999; Claudius site moved from: http://hargray.com/~jwoggon/ichome.htm to:
http://www.beaufort.k12.sc.us/learning/hh_high/staff/woggon/hlf/claudius/ichome.htm sometime late oct/nov 1999. Reconnected 5th Nov 1999. Moved again to: http://www.historyinfilm.com/claudius/index.htm. Reconnected 2nd January 2000.]
- I, Claudius: a shrine to the BBC 1976 television production. Contained an incomplete collection of episode summaries. [Site disappeared early 2000, after being available for about three years. Link removed 26 April 2000.]
- I, Claudius (review).
- Robert Graves: "Ik, Claudius" (Dutch review)
- Goodbye To All That: extracts from the 1929 edition available from Stuart Lee's Hypertext tutorial on the poet Isaac Rosenberg.
- Two further extracts from 'Goodbye To All That' are available from web pages by George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University. The first: Robert Graves on Living with Death in the Trenches. The second: Incident with Machine Gun, is followed by a question based on the extract.[linked 8th August 1999]
- The Foreword by Robert Graves to Alexander Lenard's autobiographical The Valley of the Latin Bear (The link doesn't work with very old browsers). [linked 8th August 1999]. Alexander Lenard wrote "Winnie ille Pu," a celebrated Latin translation of A. A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh". Graves and Lenard used to correspond with each other in Latin. A number of Lenard's letters remain in the Graves archive in Deya. The following is an extract from Graves' foreword:
Dr. Lenard's sole available textbook was A. A. Milne's nursery classic Winnie-the-Pooh; but it proved a great success... Dr. Lenard used... [it] while teaching the French engineers' daughters. When one of them sighed for some equally readable Latin book, he translated parts of Winnie-the-Pooh into the rich, flexible, 'humanistic' Latin that he had studied so long and lovingly while a medical historian. Completing the task at Donna Irma, some years later, he invested his last few pesos in ordering one hundred copies from a Sao Paulo printer. Through some inexplicable quirk of fortune, Winnie ille Pu was taken up by publishers in Sweden, England and the United States, and everywhere became a best seller.Part of the correspondence (in Latin) between Graves and Lenard is available on the web (uses frames and the pages don't work with very old browsers). [linked 8th August 1999]
- From the 1960 Introduction to The Greek Myths, a key passage dealing with Robert Graves interest in the role of hallucinogenic mushrooms in Greek myth and cult. In the Introduction he says that: "Since revising The Greek Myths in 1958, I have had second thoughts about the drunken god Dionysus, about the Centaurs with their contradictory reputation for wisdom and misdemeanour, and about the nature of divine ambrosia and nectar. These subjects are closely related, because the Centaurs worshipped Dionysus, whose wild autumnal feast was called `the Ambrosia'. I no longer believe that when his Maenads ran raging around the countryside, tearing animals or children in pieces and boasted afterwards of travelling to India and back, they had intoxicated themselves solely on wine or ivy-ale." See also the selection of quotations from Between Moon and Moon, dealing with the same subject.[linked 8th August 1999]
- A celebrated section of the "The White Goddess" illustrating both Graves' concept and use of analeptic thought. Graves re-interprets the contents of the titular card placed on Jesus' cross. (pp344-48). From: http://cc.uab.es/~iuts0/
- Some passages from a number of Graves' works made available by the "Council on Spiritual Practices." Their pages were redesigned early in 2000. The quotations, though highly selective, are generally reliable (though not well marked up, unfortunately):
From the 'Oxford Addresses on Poetry'. The 'Oxford Addresses' are the public lectures which Graves gave to Oxford University in 1961 on his election as Professor of Poetry; collected and published in revised form. From 'Difficult Questions, Easy Answers'. This book is one of Graves' late works, published by Cassell in 1972. From 'Between Moon and Moon: Selected Correspondence'. Two books of correspondence were edited by Paul O'Prey (the other being 'In Broken Images'); both named after Graves poems. The quotations given here all revolve around Graves' interest in the role of the hallucinogenic mushroom in ancient civilization. His correspondent is R. Gordon Wasson.
- A short review of Seven Days in New Crete, Graves' idiosyncratic reconstruction of a matriarchal society, published in 1949 (as "Watch the North Wind Rise" in the US). (http://www.strangewords.com/)
Page updated 26 Apr 2000
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