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Complete Short Stories
The ever-popular novelist and story-teller Robert Graves wrote fascinating and durable stories, here collected together in a single volume for the first time by the poet's daughter Lucia Graves.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
336 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 1996
3 people are currently reading
118 people want to read
About the author
Robert Graves
639 books2,063 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 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 10, 2025
Having come to Robert Graves via I, Claudius and Goodbye To All That, I don’t quite know what I was expecting from this collection of short stories - but it certainly wasn’t this! Some of the stories are like a more grown-up version of Roald Dahl (The Shout and Bin’s K-T are particularly memorable), and others provide a sardonic account of life under Franco’s dictatorship. Overall, this collection is a mixed bag, and I probably won’t reread it.
March 13, 2014
This is cutesy. I don't mean that as a negative. In fact,these stories highlight what is often forgotten: writers will write about anything--and that is an exciting thing to be reminded of, both as reader and as writer. Reading these stories, I pictured another great writer, Ray Bradbury writing a tale a day about whatever captured his fancy. I assume Graves was the same way.
Although there are fine proper stories in here, a lot of them aren't. Proper, I mean. (With few exceptions, they're all great.) Instead of thematic and character arcs, you could say they're tales told by a raconteur and overheard by the author. A usual construction is a first person narration by the author himself. He meets a neighbor or friend usually in Majorca where he lives, who proceeds to tell a colorful story about other people. Some stories are a page or two pages long. They're amusing miscellany.
Graves is essentially a comic writer. He's alive to irony, satire, absurdity, the little screw ups and beneficial happenstances of life that say the universe has a sense of humor. He pokes fun at the stuffy English aristocracy, at stuffy religious moralists. At his own childhood. Many stories are about that. In the preface, his daughter Lucia, who edited the book, quotes her father as saying he doesn't know how to write fiction. Many of the stories are autobiographical, what he did or what he heard from others. Many are about his life in Majorca where he falls into local adventures and meets passionate people. His outlook is always comic and always alive to his surroundings in case it could make a good story. It usually does.
But then we get supernatural stuff, and historical fiction. His stories about the Roman Empire are some of the best in the book. Of course he was a poet and translator of Greek and Latin texts, and he takes fully advantage of his erudition to craft highly entertaining stories about how the Romans lives. There's also wonderful stories about WWI, where he served. There is a moving account of the life of his mother, and he honors her as a parent by crafting a beautiful and comprehensive mini bio of her life.
There are 52 stories in 326 pages. They are dramatic, comic, moving, ribald, but most of all joyous. It's getting back to the freedom the writer has--that is hardly ever expressed to the reader--that he can write well about everything, and that creativity and art don't depend on usual forms. If you prefer the usual form of a short story, give this book a chance. By the end, you'll have loved it.
Although there are fine proper stories in here, a lot of them aren't. Proper, I mean. (With few exceptions, they're all great.) Instead of thematic and character arcs, you could say they're tales told by a raconteur and overheard by the author. A usual construction is a first person narration by the author himself. He meets a neighbor or friend usually in Majorca where he lives, who proceeds to tell a colorful story about other people. Some stories are a page or two pages long. They're amusing miscellany.
Graves is essentially a comic writer. He's alive to irony, satire, absurdity, the little screw ups and beneficial happenstances of life that say the universe has a sense of humor. He pokes fun at the stuffy English aristocracy, at stuffy religious moralists. At his own childhood. Many stories are about that. In the preface, his daughter Lucia, who edited the book, quotes her father as saying he doesn't know how to write fiction. Many of the stories are autobiographical, what he did or what he heard from others. Many are about his life in Majorca where he falls into local adventures and meets passionate people. His outlook is always comic and always alive to his surroundings in case it could make a good story. It usually does.
But then we get supernatural stuff, and historical fiction. His stories about the Roman Empire are some of the best in the book. Of course he was a poet and translator of Greek and Latin texts, and he takes fully advantage of his erudition to craft highly entertaining stories about how the Romans lives. There's also wonderful stories about WWI, where he served. There is a moving account of the life of his mother, and he honors her as a parent by crafting a beautiful and comprehensive mini bio of her life.
There are 52 stories in 326 pages. They are dramatic, comic, moving, ribald, but most of all joyous. It's getting back to the freedom the writer has--that is hardly ever expressed to the reader--that he can write well about everything, and that creativity and art don't depend on usual forms. If you prefer the usual form of a short story, give this book a chance. By the end, you'll have loved it.
June 1, 2025
There is a strange mixture of stories in this collection. Many of them are set in Spain and these are some of the best. One feels that the author is self censoring in not being too critical of the authorities for fear of upsetting the Fascist state. Of course the big question is how a man of such artistic sensibilities such as Robert Graves could live in a country with such authoritarian policies and artistic barbarism. which was the reality of life in Spain before Franco's death. --He must have had to restrain himself and you feel the same restraint in place in some of these Spanish stories. Having said that Robert Graves is a fine writer. Gooddbye to all That is one of the finest pieces of writing about the First World War. I Claudius has given pleasure to millions Those skills shine through in many of these stories.
April 19, 2020
A mixed bag of short stories. Some ("The Shout") recall Roald Dahl. The British and Roman reminiscences are good social studies, and convey a great deal of autobiography. The Majorcan-themed stories are teeming with life and unbelievable life events - were they not true!
June 8, 2018
An entertaining selection of short stories (some very short) ranging from ancient Rome to school canteen treacle tart. I remember it well, and the associated rhyme. The tart that is, not Rome.
I
I
May 12, 2014
Taking this book as my sequel to his “Goodbye to All That” (1929), since a few years ago I have leafed through its 52 stories and read any title that I found interestingly inspiring, humorous or admiring. As for me, it is a bit tedious if I simply read from Nos. 1-52, rather my usual option is that I would read any title covering a few pages first like “Honey and Flowers” (1.5 pages), “My New-Bug’s Exam” (less than 1.5), “Interview With a Dead Man” (1.5), etc. However, one of the tactics is possibly by means of reading any title you prefer as advised on the back cover, for example: “The Abominable Mr Gunn” (the descriptions of unhappy life at boarding school), “Christmas Truce” (the First World War story), “Bins K to T” (the wittily haunting anecdote), etc.
Mr. Graves has famously written poems, historical novels, non-fiction books as well as translated Apuleius, Lucan, and Suetonius in the Penguin Classics series in which his readers can still find to read nowadays, that is, he has produced “more than 140 works” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G...). Thus, in this anthology-like edited by his daughter we would read to explore various genres, for instance, “Old Papa Johnson” (true story), “A Bicycle in Majorca” (memoir), “The Myconian” (historical), etc. since “these pieces illustrate the brilliance of Robert Graves in the short-story form.” (back cover)
I found reading this excerpt delightfully inspiring:
What lessons I learned from my mother can be told in very few words. She taught me to despise fame and riches, not to be deceived by appearances, to tell the truth on all possible occasions -- I regret having taken her too literally at times -- and to keep my head in time of danger. ... One word of wisdom, which she whispered to me when I was seven years old, has always stuck in my mind, and I pass it on to my children and grandchildren -- by the way I became a great-grandparent last year.
'Robert,' she said, 'this is a great secret, never forget it! Work is far more interesting than play.'
Hence my obsession with work, which is also my play.
... (p. 322)
Next, this extract deserves his readers’ attention regarding its figurative language; it is so rare that I have never read such a sentence before, therefore, it instantly reminded me of a black-and-white cartoon film depicting such a few merrily laughing crows presumably having done/spoken something funny I watched on television some four decades ago. And here it is:
‘ … If we’re not scuppered, and that’s a ten to one chance. What’s more, next Christmas there won’t be any more fun and games and fraternization. I’m doubtful whether I’ll get with this present act of insubordination; but I’m a man of my word, as you are, and we’ve both kept our engagement.”
“’Oh, yes, Colonel,” says the Major. “I too will be lucky if I am not court-martialled. Our orders were as severe as yours.” So they laughed like crows together.
… (p. 305)
This is of course one of Mr. Graves’ masterly sense of humor since, I think, we have never seen/heard crows laugh, they naturally cry loudly and unpleasantly to the world; therefore, the crows in question do not only simply show off their laughter but also the way in which they nod their heads gaping their beaks hilariously like merry people do. Indeed, this credit should aptly be given to someone who got such a creative idea by presenting some movie scenes of the ‘laughing crows’ to the viewers instead of their vulgar image, a real optimist who has since revealed, at least, one of the good points of those hateful crows whenever we see them anywhere in the world and pitilessly take their image for granted.
Mr. Graves has famously written poems, historical novels, non-fiction books as well as translated Apuleius, Lucan, and Suetonius in the Penguin Classics series in which his readers can still find to read nowadays, that is, he has produced “more than 140 works” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G...). Thus, in this anthology-like edited by his daughter we would read to explore various genres, for instance, “Old Papa Johnson” (true story), “A Bicycle in Majorca” (memoir), “The Myconian” (historical), etc. since “these pieces illustrate the brilliance of Robert Graves in the short-story form.” (back cover)
I found reading this excerpt delightfully inspiring:
What lessons I learned from my mother can be told in very few words. She taught me to despise fame and riches, not to be deceived by appearances, to tell the truth on all possible occasions -- I regret having taken her too literally at times -- and to keep my head in time of danger. ... One word of wisdom, which she whispered to me when I was seven years old, has always stuck in my mind, and I pass it on to my children and grandchildren -- by the way I became a great-grandparent last year.
'Robert,' she said, 'this is a great secret, never forget it! Work is far more interesting than play.'
Hence my obsession with work, which is also my play.
... (p. 322)
Next, this extract deserves his readers’ attention regarding its figurative language; it is so rare that I have never read such a sentence before, therefore, it instantly reminded me of a black-and-white cartoon film depicting such a few merrily laughing crows presumably having done/spoken something funny I watched on television some four decades ago. And here it is:
‘ … If we’re not scuppered, and that’s a ten to one chance. What’s more, next Christmas there won’t be any more fun and games and fraternization. I’m doubtful whether I’ll get with this present act of insubordination; but I’m a man of my word, as you are, and we’ve both kept our engagement.”
“’Oh, yes, Colonel,” says the Major. “I too will be lucky if I am not court-martialled. Our orders were as severe as yours.” So they laughed like crows together.
… (p. 305)
This is of course one of Mr. Graves’ masterly sense of humor since, I think, we have never seen/heard crows laugh, they naturally cry loudly and unpleasantly to the world; therefore, the crows in question do not only simply show off their laughter but also the way in which they nod their heads gaping their beaks hilariously like merry people do. Indeed, this credit should aptly be given to someone who got such a creative idea by presenting some movie scenes of the ‘laughing crows’ to the viewers instead of their vulgar image, a real optimist who has since revealed, at least, one of the good points of those hateful crows whenever we see them anywhere in the world and pitilessly take their image for granted.
June 24, 2014
Robert Graves is a fine observer of the quirks of everyday life in the small towns of Majorca, where he lived for many years. It's probably this ability to paint character quickly that allows him to write historical fiction so persuasively. The collection of stories in this book is diverse and easy to enjoy.
December 10, 2018
Speaks to Graves' literary talent that his oft-forgotten shorts are as varied, amusing, exciting and downright creepy as these, when so much emphasis is placed on his historical and poetical works. Praise for Guinea Worms, The Shout and The Whittaker Negroes. Can't recommend highly enough.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews