Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

By Bright Summaries

Unlock the more straightforward side of Goodbye to All That with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, an autobiographical work which spans the period from his childhood to his decision to leave England for good in the 1920s. In particular, it vividly depicts his experiences as an officer during the First World War, during which he witnessed the horrors of trench warfare at first hand and forged close friendships with his fellow soldier-poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Robert Graves was an English poet, novelist and critic. As well as Goodbye to All That, he is known for his novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which are now regarded as classic works of historical fiction.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
• Release date: Mar 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9782808015851

Book preview

ENGLISH WRITER

Born in Wimbledon in 1895.

Died in Deyá (Majorca) in 1985.

Notable works:

I, Claudius (1934), novel

The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (1948), poetic mythology

The Complete Poems (2003), poetry

Born in 1895 into an upper-class family that was both literary and religious, Robert Graves had a privileged background. He went to public school and became an officer in the First World War. The poetry he wrote about his experiences on the battlefront is disturbing and realistic. His beautiful and moving love poems came later, inspired first by his second wife Beryl Hodge, then, when he was older, by his muses, real women whom he saw as incarnations of the White Goddess (Graves believed that in ancient times matriarchal cultures worshipped a female divinity he called the White Goddess, and that this Goddess reappeared in the forms of certain women for the purpose of inspiring poetry). Between 1916 and 1975, he produced 55 poetry collections and in all wrote more than 120 books, including 15 novels and 40 works of non-fiction. Between 1961 and 1966, he was Professor of English Literature at Oxford University. In 1976, his novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God were made into a major BBC television series. He spent most of his life after 1929 on the island of Majorca, first with his then-partner Laura Riding, then with Beryl, with whom he had four children.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Genre: autobiography

Reference edition: Graves, R. (1957) Goodbye to All That. London: Penguin Books.

1stedition: 1929

Themes: war, poetry, friendship, love, pacificism, socialism

Goodbye to All That is not only a personal account of Robert