Robert Graves: The Assault Heroic, 1895-1926

by Richard Perceval Graves

A biography of the early years of Robert Graves, providing a detailed account of the writer's parents, upbringing, first marriage, friendships, and service in France during the war

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Richard Perceval Graves (born 21 December 1945) is an English biographer, poet and lecturer, best known for his three-volume biography of his uncle Robert Graves.

Richard Graves was born in Brighton, England, the son of John Tiarks Ranke Graves, a younger son of Alfred Perceval Graves. He was educated at Tollard Royal, Dorset, The White House, Wokingham and at Holme Grange School, Wokingham. He went on to Copthorne School (1954–1959), Charterhouse (1959–1964) and St John's College, Oxford (1964–1968). At Oxford, Graves read Modern History and then completed a Diploma in Education. He then taught at several schools until 1973, the year in which he became a full-time writer.

Graves is the author of some nineteen books, including biographies of T. E. Lawrence, A. E. Housman, the Powys brothers (John Cowper Powys, Theodore Francis Powys and Llewelyn Powys) and Richard Hughes. He has written a number of other books on a variety of subjects, and collaborated on several other publishing projects. Graves continues to write, and lectures on the subjects and people about whom he has written. He is married with three children and lives in Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

Reviews

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one reads or views Graves' poetry or his wonderful novel I, CLAUDIUS, one can only wonder whence came such talent. This book is the answer, detailing his fascinating family background and upbringing, as well as his impressive struggles with schooling, with family and in the trenches of France in the First World War. Nor did his married life and early career become any easier, the life of a young poet paying as well as you might imagine, particularly a poet with four young children. Still, Graves is truly inspirational in the way he always followed his own path and refused to waver, despite considerable pressures. Tempered by these experiences and never forgetting to work hard, he prepared for the astounded beginnings of success described in the next book in the series, The Years With Laura Riding.

[Madkindle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christmas present from A. Loved it.

[Michael Canoeist · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Assault Heroic is the first volume of a 3-volume biography of Robert Graves, by his nephew. I read it as the presumed prerequisite for the second volume, in which Graves, his first wife, and American poet Laura Riding live and work together in a curious menage a trois -- has to be interesting to see how that evolves and eventually resolves. This first volume is an exhaustive, and exhausting, recapitulation of Graves' youth, leading up to the impetuous decision to invite Laura Riding, whom he has never met, to go to Egypt with the Graveses -- Siegfried Sassoon having already turned down Robert's desperate invitation, intended to obtain some comfort and support as he goes to his first teaching job, far from home. (Despite one of the title's possible meanings, only a relatively small part of this volume concerns World War I itself.) Author R.P. Graves has tremendous sources from within his extensive literary family; the problem is, the more one knows of Robert, the less one can respect his ideas and theories. Impetuous, mercurial, and capricious, he seems from all the details. And none too deep in his analytical thinking. Self-serving, but also easily led by stronger personalities, at least in his youth..... Ouch; this is not fun to write, and reading this has probably made it impossible to appreciate Goodbye to All That, which I have not read but which seems to be Graves' chief literary achievement. His greatest virtues, as this book reveals, are determination and persistence. The poetry quoted here is serviceable, but nothing more. A minor attraction of the biography is that the British literary world was a small one, so many famous characters like Sassoon, T.E. Lawrence, Wilfred Owen and Virginia Woolf appear at some point in Robert's story. Also, the depiction of the larger Graves family's pre-war life shows a vanished world that made me a little nostalgic for just how much fun, leisure, and grandness a middle-class British life could contain at that moment in history. To sum up, this book is for the devotee only, but be warned that it may well threaten that devotion with the portrait it draws.

[Wilfriedhoujebek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of a three-book biography of Robert Graves by his nephew Richard Perceval Graves. The Assault Heroic deals with the period also covered in Graves' own (and brilliant) 'Goodbye to All That' but with more eye for the ... facts. RP Graves does a great job showing how a precocious, inexperienced public school boy from a well-to-do upper middle class but with a rebellious streak ends up in the trenches of WWI and there, f2f with the pointless murder of a generation, will forever lose confidence with society. Once released back to *normal* life he tries to create an essentially conventional life for himself as a writer but shell shock and a deep rooted sense of insecurity, a need to be led by someone worthy to be worshipped, slowly leads him into the arms of Laura Rider.
Extremely readable, well documented, intensely detailed: this book brings Robert Graves to life as if you are watching his progress as a writer through a microscope.

[Yooperprof · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much family trivia about Graves and his family and his difficulties as a household manager.