What do you think?
Rate this book
Robert Graves: Life on the Edge
Robert Graves (1895-1985) was one of the greatest poets and polymaths of the twentieth century whose long life matched the intensity of his imaginative output.
From his distinguished exploits in the First World War, described in his memoir Goodbye to All That, to his dramatic relationships with women, most notably the American poet and essayist Laura Riding, his life was one of extremes. He was a man who took huge emotional risks, and lived as if each day was his last, but who also produced works that were among the finest of his era.
Miranda Seymour has had full access to previously unseen papers and her research has also uncovered many important letters in private and public collections.
Her interviews and correspondence with many people who have not previously discussed Graves in public contribute to a rich and complex portrait of an extraordinary and troubled man and a great creative artist.
'Robert Graves: Life on the Edge' is the definitive biography of one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century.
'It is Miranda Seymour's Robert Graves: Life on the Edge that I would recommend first.' Times Educational Supplement
'The most balanced account of his life is Miranda Seymour's excellent biography.' Diana Mosley, Evening Standard
'Lucid and beautifully written.' The Tablet
'The most concise, the least pompous and partisan.' Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday
'This sympathetic study of an egocentric, monstrous, lovable genius is beautifully written.' Literary Review
'This is a stirring story and Seymour tells it exceptionally well.' Independent
Miranda Seymour is the author of the innovative and widely admired ‘Ring of Conspirators’, a study of Henry James and his circle, and of the acclaimed biography ‘Ottoline Morrel: Life on the Grand Scale’, twelve times selected as book of the year for 1992. Her latest work is ‘Noble Endeavours: The Story of Two Countries, England and Germany, in Many Stories’. She also writes novels and children's books. She lives in London.
Endeavour Press is The UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.
From his distinguished exploits in the First World War, described in his memoir Goodbye to All That, to his dramatic relationships with women, most notably the American poet and essayist Laura Riding, his life was one of extremes. He was a man who took huge emotional risks, and lived as if each day was his last, but who also produced works that were among the finest of his era.
Miranda Seymour has had full access to previously unseen papers and her research has also uncovered many important letters in private and public collections.
Her interviews and correspondence with many people who have not previously discussed Graves in public contribute to a rich and complex portrait of an extraordinary and troubled man and a great creative artist.
'Robert Graves: Life on the Edge' is the definitive biography of one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century.
'It is Miranda Seymour's Robert Graves: Life on the Edge that I would recommend first.' Times Educational Supplement
'The most balanced account of his life is Miranda Seymour's excellent biography.' Diana Mosley, Evening Standard
'Lucid and beautifully written.' The Tablet
'The most concise, the least pompous and partisan.' Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday
'This sympathetic study of an egocentric, monstrous, lovable genius is beautifully written.' Literary Review
'This is a stirring story and Seymour tells it exceptionally well.' Independent
Miranda Seymour is the author of the innovative and widely admired ‘Ring of Conspirators’, a study of Henry James and his circle, and of the acclaimed biography ‘Ottoline Morrel: Life on the Grand Scale’, twelve times selected as book of the year for 1992. Her latest work is ‘Noble Endeavours: The Story of Two Countries, England and Germany, in Many Stories’. She also writes novels and children's books. She lives in London.
Endeavour Press is The UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.
543 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1995
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 7, 2020
I cant help wondering if Miranda Seymour had any idea of the task she was undertaking when she embarked on this biography of Robert Graves, author, poet, and so psychologically unusual that even after these 544 pages devoted to his life I, at least, still didn't get a feeling for who he was and what he was like.
I do know a great deal about what he did, the sequence of his writings and relationships with his two wives (sequential) and the multiple young muses (overlapping with wives but usually sequential in the role of muse) he needed to prompt his poetic spirit. Probably more than I wanted to know, if I'm honest.
I very much enjoyed the Graves works I read years ago - Goodbye to All That , The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39, the two Claudius novels, The Greek Myths, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth and others and, apart from the Myths, it's fair to say I have only a general impression now of most of them.
When I read White Goddess, I was both challenged and fascinated by it. I've found it almost distressing to read the extent to which Graves pursued the Goddess throughout his life in his relationships with women, especially those whom he cast as Muse. Far too complex to explain here without sounding glib. It's good to know that this biography was written with the full cooperation of the Graves family in bringing Graves' emotional complexity and pain into the public arena.
The Amazon blurb quotes Graves as saying "I have never been able to understand the contention that a poet's life is irrelevant to his work" . Seymour has made this connection acutely clear.
I do know a great deal about what he did, the sequence of his writings and relationships with his two wives (sequential) and the multiple young muses (overlapping with wives but usually sequential in the role of muse) he needed to prompt his poetic spirit. Probably more than I wanted to know, if I'm honest.
I very much enjoyed the Graves works I read years ago - Goodbye to All That , The Long Week-End: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-39, the two Claudius novels, The Greek Myths, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth and others and, apart from the Myths, it's fair to say I have only a general impression now of most of them.
When I read White Goddess, I was both challenged and fascinated by it. I've found it almost distressing to read the extent to which Graves pursued the Goddess throughout his life in his relationships with women, especially those whom he cast as Muse. Far too complex to explain here without sounding glib. It's good to know that this biography was written with the full cooperation of the Graves family in bringing Graves' emotional complexity and pain into the public arena.
The Amazon blurb quotes Graves as saying "I have never been able to understand the contention that a poet's life is irrelevant to his work" . Seymour has made this connection acutely clear.
July 7, 2016
Robert Graves was an amazing character who survived an overbearing Victorian family, hellish English boarding schools and the trenches of WW I to emerge "shell shocked" and barely able to put his brilliant mind to work. His obsession with the female "Muse" led him into the most incredible collection of marriages, and chaotic relationships with viragos, harridans, sex objects and mother figures so he could derive poetry from his torture - which to him was much like the trenches of the great war - a duty to his gift as a poet just as a soldier he had a duty to fight. From these he wrote some of the most readable works of prose I've enjoyed - such as I CLAUDIUS. The term "mad dogs and Englishman" might well have been inspired by his crashing through the china shop of life.
November 8, 2026
I read this large book as a response to my reading of Graves’ intense, inspiring, and sometimes tiresome The White Goddess. I wanted to know who he was. This book confirms everything I had suspected. Graves really was an intuitive literary genius, given to obsessions verging on insanity.
My high rating is for the book of Miranda Seymour, not the person of Robert Graves, who would probably only get 3.5 to 4 stars. Seymour’s research and writing are both admirable and often superb. She seems to have read almost every letter that it was possible to obtain that Robert Graves either wrote or received, and a great many other letters that others wrote about him. She reviewed the massive amount written about him, too, both the good and the bad. Seymour, a well-known and very accomplished biographer, read all of his works, and he was surprisingly prolific. She interviewed everyone who was still alive and once knew him personally, and she read much of the oeuvre of other authors who had known Graves well and mentioned him. This includes the bitter and hateful invective directed at him later in life by his first "muse", Laura Rider, who seemed to support her ego with delusions of grandeur. Seymour's accomplishment cannot be overstated. She left no stone and no page unturned.
How could she possibly come up with fair judgments on Graves’s mercurial character? She had to accept him as a living contradiction. As I discovered when reading The White Goddess, Graves is a strange mixture of incredible literary talent and mythological research (not so much anthropological or historical research, however), a just as incredible synthesizer of a vast array of sometimes contradictory myth and ritual, a poetic intuitive that knows no bounds, and sometimes a total fabulist who makes unsupported claims. He was both a charming raconteur who could convince others of his most outlandish claims and a ruthless debater against those who see things differently. Was he a genius? He was undoubtedly a poetic genius, yes. Was he an eccentric? Also, without a doubt. In fact, in his obsessions and irrational claims, he often came across as quite mad.
Graves was good friends with Gordon Wesson, of magic mushroom fame, and he himself indulged on several occasions. He believed the initiates at the Eleusinian Mysteries drank a brew of magic mushrooms.
Despite a significant number of killings on the battlefield as a brave young soldier in WWI, Graves was quite feminine when he was growing up (as poets tend to be). He enjoyed the company of other males, many of them homosexuals, more than women, whom he feared for a long time. Was he gay, as so many in the gay club claim he was? Seymour finds no evidence of any actual liaisons, and he was shocked to learn of whispers about him. After his first marriage and his neurotic attachments to ever-younger “muses”, Graves seems to have become quite a lustful heterosexual, though he had a strong submissive streak for the power of the White Goddess and her avatars and seems to have embraced the pain they caused him when they were unfaithful.
He was dead certain of his judgment of other authors, but, again, he reveals himself as a determined outsider here. He admired the work of anyone who admired his work, but he was very hard on the major achievers of his era.
He loved the folksy Robert Frost, and, strangely, some of those he despised, like Auden and Eliot, admired his work. T. S. Eliot wrote in response to The White Goddess that it was a “prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book.” (p. 312). Somethng with which I quite agree. Graves’s White Goddess was largely inspired by the work of turn-of-the-century British classicist, Jane Ellen Harrison, and folklorist J. G. Frazer. He claims never to have read C. G. Jung, whose archetypal theories so resemble his Goddess theories, but I often think it’s a pity that he never read Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother, which was published around the same time. What a confrontation that would have been!
My high rating is for the book of Miranda Seymour, not the person of Robert Graves, who would probably only get 3.5 to 4 stars. Seymour’s research and writing are both admirable and often superb. She seems to have read almost every letter that it was possible to obtain that Robert Graves either wrote or received, and a great many other letters that others wrote about him. She reviewed the massive amount written about him, too, both the good and the bad. Seymour, a well-known and very accomplished biographer, read all of his works, and he was surprisingly prolific. She interviewed everyone who was still alive and once knew him personally, and she read much of the oeuvre of other authors who had known Graves well and mentioned him. This includes the bitter and hateful invective directed at him later in life by his first "muse", Laura Rider, who seemed to support her ego with delusions of grandeur. Seymour's accomplishment cannot be overstated. She left no stone and no page unturned.
How could she possibly come up with fair judgments on Graves’s mercurial character? She had to accept him as a living contradiction. As I discovered when reading The White Goddess, Graves is a strange mixture of incredible literary talent and mythological research (not so much anthropological or historical research, however), a just as incredible synthesizer of a vast array of sometimes contradictory myth and ritual, a poetic intuitive that knows no bounds, and sometimes a total fabulist who makes unsupported claims. He was both a charming raconteur who could convince others of his most outlandish claims and a ruthless debater against those who see things differently. Was he a genius? He was undoubtedly a poetic genius, yes. Was he an eccentric? Also, without a doubt. In fact, in his obsessions and irrational claims, he often came across as quite mad.
Graves was good friends with Gordon Wesson, of magic mushroom fame, and he himself indulged on several occasions. He believed the initiates at the Eleusinian Mysteries drank a brew of magic mushrooms.
Science, to him, was the enemy of everything he revered, and scientists were foreigners to the state of creative trance. (p. 411)
Despite a significant number of killings on the battlefield as a brave young soldier in WWI, Graves was quite feminine when he was growing up (as poets tend to be). He enjoyed the company of other males, many of them homosexuals, more than women, whom he feared for a long time. Was he gay, as so many in the gay club claim he was? Seymour finds no evidence of any actual liaisons, and he was shocked to learn of whispers about him. After his first marriage and his neurotic attachments to ever-younger “muses”, Graves seems to have become quite a lustful heterosexual, though he had a strong submissive streak for the power of the White Goddess and her avatars and seems to have embraced the pain they caused him when they were unfaithful.
He was dead certain of his judgment of other authors, but, again, he reveals himself as a determined outsider here. He admired the work of anyone who admired his work, but he was very hard on the major achievers of his era.
His targets were Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Auden and Dylan Thomas. [Graves wrote:]Need I also dwell on the lesser idols now slowly mouldering on sick, muddle-headed, sex-mad D. H. Lawrence who wrote sketches for poems, but nothing more; on poor, tortured Gerard Manley Hopkins? (p. 353)
He loved the folksy Robert Frost, and, strangely, some of those he despised, like Auden and Eliot, admired his work. T. S. Eliot wrote in response to The White Goddess that it was a “prodigious, monstrous, stupefying, indescribable book.” (p. 312). Somethng with which I quite agree. Graves’s White Goddess was largely inspired by the work of turn-of-the-century British classicist, Jane Ellen Harrison, and folklorist J. G. Frazer. He claims never to have read C. G. Jung, whose archetypal theories so resemble his Goddess theories, but I often think it’s a pity that he never read Erich Neumann’s The Great Mother, which was published around the same time. What a confrontation that would have been!
February 18, 2017
This is an excellent biography. Graves was a fascinating person and led an eventful life which surprised me. For all his charm and talent he was really unstable throughout all of his life. This instability helped him create wonderful poetry but it cost much grief to those near to him. He was oddly vulnerable to rapacious young women who exploited him mercilessly and caused humiliation to his two wives. Their behaviour in turn helped him to create poetry. I hadn't read his poetry before and it is wonderful but I don't feel like reading it now that I know the heartbreak that it came from.
He went from brutal boarding school to the army and World War One and then into his first marriage with Nancy Nicholson who was creative and talented and an ardent feminist. They had too many children too quickly and no money. Their existence was interrupted by the appalling Laura Riding. I only have Miranda Seymour's description of her behaviour and influence but she appears to be one of the few genuinely evil people the world has thrown up.
As Graves wrote books that were successful he gave a lot of his money away or made foolish purchases. He bought up properties in Mallorca where he lived and was exploited by the wily local landowners. Nancy and the children were abandoned and he married Beryl another lovely woman who tolerated and supported him.
I loved the book. I like Goodbye to all That to some extent and I loved Wife to Mr Milton which I read along time ago. And of course I Claudius by way of the mini series. And I loved the poetry that is quoted in this book. But I don't love Graves the man as much as I thought I would.
He went from brutal boarding school to the army and World War One and then into his first marriage with Nancy Nicholson who was creative and talented and an ardent feminist. They had too many children too quickly and no money. Their existence was interrupted by the appalling Laura Riding. I only have Miranda Seymour's description of her behaviour and influence but she appears to be one of the few genuinely evil people the world has thrown up.
As Graves wrote books that were successful he gave a lot of his money away or made foolish purchases. He bought up properties in Mallorca where he lived and was exploited by the wily local landowners. Nancy and the children were abandoned and he married Beryl another lovely woman who tolerated and supported him.
I loved the book. I like Goodbye to all That to some extent and I loved Wife to Mr Milton which I read along time ago. And of course I Claudius by way of the mini series. And I loved the poetry that is quoted in this book. But I don't love Graves the man as much as I thought I would.
August 29, 2023
My only interest in Robert Graves was through Goodbye To All That and the Claudius novels. I have no interest in his poetry - because I am a deeply un-poetic soul.
This biography kept me interested in the story of his life all the way through the book - even the bits of poetry (or 'pomes', as we used to say at school). At this rate I'll start reading all of The Lord Of The Rings; not just skipping through the 'hibbidy-jibbidy-jap'...
A splendid book. Go to your nearest library and steal a copy. (I don't really mean that. Property is theft and theft of property is double theft.)
This biography kept me interested in the story of his life all the way through the book - even the bits of poetry (or 'pomes', as we used to say at school). At this rate I'll start reading all of The Lord Of The Rings; not just skipping through the 'hibbidy-jibbidy-jap'...
A splendid book. Go to your nearest library and steal a copy. (I don't really mean that. Property is theft and theft of property is double theft.)
May 17, 2017
Excellent biography, particularly concerning the early years. She is, perhaps, a little hard on Laura Riding, (who comes over as a really impossible person!) but the description of their relationship is fascinating. Only four stars because Seymour does not write well about Graves as a poet (or about Riding, for that matter). And, after all, that was what he was about: there is only one story worth telling. I recommend John O'Meara's books for a deeper treatment of the poetry.
January 15, 2026
This is a substantial biography of Robert Graves. I think if it was written now, it would be much less sympathetic about his relationships with his series of young female muses.
I've read his best known novels, which I really enjoyed - Goodbye to all that, the Claudius novels. Not much of his poetry. but from reading this biography and the poems within it, I have no real desire to do so.
However, this is a very well written and researched book about a key poet of his era.
I've read his best known novels, which I really enjoyed - Goodbye to all that, the Claudius novels. Not much of his poetry. but from reading this biography and the poems within it, I have no real desire to do so.
However, this is a very well written and researched book about a key poet of his era.
October 29, 2026
Seymour, Miranda in Robert Graves : Life on the Edge pushes the idea that most of us are just bad at saying "I don't know." I felt like it was solid, because it's less about being smart and more about being honest, and the stories from doctors and pilots who admitted mistakes are gripping. The chapter on meetings got me thinking about every time I nodded along to something I didn't understand. You might not agree with all the advice, but it definitely forces you to rethink what looking smart really means.
January 4, 2017
Astonishing biography of one of the soldier poets of the Great War. He suffered from shell-shock (PTSD) throughout his life. His survivor guilt drove him to submit to suffering voluntarily. It also was the engine that drove his poetry.
November 2, 2026
Quick verdict: smart idea, uneven execution. What worked: the central question in Robert Graves : Life on the Edge stuck with me for days. What didn't: miranda-seymour buries it under too many examples. Recommend for curious people with patience, skip if you want the short version.
August 7, 2016
I have been curious about Robert Graves dating back to my read of his first book ' Good-Bye to all That' which I really enjoyed and later the novel 'I, Claudius.' Then I read a piece about him in the New Yorker about his relationship with the daughter of a friend of his who he called his muse. Later still I tried reading 'The White-Goddess', a strange rambling account of the prehistory of poetry and ancient poets connection to matriarchal society. All these strands and echoes lead me to read Seymour's biography of Graves.
The bio is written in a clear unadorned style and follows Graves in a straight forward line right to his death at the age of 90. There is very little psychological spec about the why of Graves but there is much about how and what he did with his life. Seymour claims he is one of the U.K.'s great love poets. I don't think so. In fact the poems quoted strike me as stuck in tone and language to the early pre-war period. His quest and need for muses so he can write poetry in his later years is both romantic and foolish but there is also an impish charm in his desire for females muses.
His second wife Beryl was a saint.
Graves life and his quest as a poet is ordinary; the drama of his relationships no more or less than other people who are not poets. Although, his pivotal relationship with the American poet Laura Riding was strange in how much he bent himself out of shape for her and his refusal to tolerate any criticism of her. He was , of course, an ass towards many contemporary poets such as Dylan Thomas and Auden and did not treat all his children well. He also courted fame and attention( he wanted to break into film badly) contrary to what most think about literary artists.
What is most remarkable about him is his capacity for work which resulted in over 100 books ( fiction, non-fiction, & poetry) and thus sustaining two families on the strength of his writing royalties alone. The other thing that is amazing is how much he was feted from a fairly early age as a poet.
The little of what I have read of his poetry has not aged well. I prefer his prose.
The bio is written in a clear unadorned style and follows Graves in a straight forward line right to his death at the age of 90. There is very little psychological spec about the why of Graves but there is much about how and what he did with his life. Seymour claims he is one of the U.K.'s great love poets. I don't think so. In fact the poems quoted strike me as stuck in tone and language to the early pre-war period. His quest and need for muses so he can write poetry in his later years is both romantic and foolish but there is also an impish charm in his desire for females muses.
His second wife Beryl was a saint.
Graves life and his quest as a poet is ordinary; the drama of his relationships no more or less than other people who are not poets. Although, his pivotal relationship with the American poet Laura Riding was strange in how much he bent himself out of shape for her and his refusal to tolerate any criticism of her. He was , of course, an ass towards many contemporary poets such as Dylan Thomas and Auden and did not treat all his children well. He also courted fame and attention( he wanted to break into film badly) contrary to what most think about literary artists.
What is most remarkable about him is his capacity for work which resulted in over 100 books ( fiction, non-fiction, & poetry) and thus sustaining two families on the strength of his writing royalties alone. The other thing that is amazing is how much he was feted from a fairly early age as a poet.
The little of what I have read of his poetry has not aged well. I prefer his prose.
January 18, 2013
A very fine biography.
Read
December 11, 2013A wonderful account of a genius
November 2, 2015
His moral compass was broken.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews