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Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography. Illustrated
Good-Bye to All That is the compelling autobiography of poet, novelist, and classicist Robert Graves, offering a candid account of his life, from his early years in England to his harrowing experiences as a soldier in World War I. Originally published in 1929, the memoir is celebrated for its frank and unflinching look at the trauma of war and the profound disillusionment it left in its wake.
Graves provides readers with a vivid portrayal of trench warfare, recounting the horror, camaraderie, and absurdity he witnessed on the Western Front. His detailed observations capture the brutality of combat and the psychological toll on soldiers, challenging romanticized perceptions of war. Beyond his wartime experiences, Graves delves into his post-war life, marked by struggles to readjust to civilian society, as well as his involvement in the literary circles of his time, where he formed friendships with notable writers like Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence.
Written with wit, irony, and insight, Good-Bye to All That not only serves as a personal reflection but also as a broader critique of the lost generation’s disillusionment. It stands as a timeless exploration of the costs of war, the search for identity, and the struggle to make sense of a world turned upside down by conflict.
Graves provides readers with a vivid portrayal of trench warfare, recounting the horror, camaraderie, and absurdity he witnessed on the Western Front. His detailed observations capture the brutality of combat and the psychological toll on soldiers, challenging romanticized perceptions of war. Beyond his wartime experiences, Graves delves into his post-war life, marked by struggles to readjust to civilian society, as well as his involvement in the literary circles of his time, where he formed friendships with notable writers like Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence.
Written with wit, irony, and insight, Good-Bye to All That not only serves as a personal reflection but also as a broader critique of the lost generation’s disillusionment. It stands as a timeless exploration of the costs of war, the search for identity, and the struggle to make sense of a world turned upside down by conflict.
388 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 17, 2024
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About the author
Robert Graves
620 books2,030 followersRobert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. Born in Wimbledon, he received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G.H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 15, 2025
In effect this is Graves’ diary in that it includes trivia as well as interesting aspects of his life in chronological order. I found the first section the most interesting: his life as a schoolboy in Charterhouse around the turn of the century. It gives life to all the sado-erotic things we heard about English public schools. He enlisted for WW1 and records terrible things one after the other, so much they seem to become less terrible in the frequent telling. He has been criticised for inaccuracies. One I pciked up was his decription of the French being hostile to troops during WW1: he is scathing about them. My Unclke Reg served in France in WW1 and found them very hospitable – at least to Australian troops. Maybe they were reacting to British arrogance, which often comes out in Graves’s auto. Graves mentions many giant literary figures of the time, seeing himself as one, but on the whole I found this tedious, with much skipping.
January 22, 2025
I was interested in the Great War and Robert Graves' book gives one not only a firsthand account, but the public school background that he came from as well as many of the young officers who fought for England. Reminiscences of the War Poets are of particular interest. At the end, I think the narrative loses its power but most of the book is fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews