The Early Poetry of Robert Graves: The Goddess Beckons

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S Beryl Graves’s reading of an early draft of this book and her encouragement and comments have done much to give it shape; errors in judgment may well have occurred when I was not assiduous in following her advice. Catherine Nicholson Dalton has been generous with information about her mother, Nancy Nicholson, and I am indebted to her for reading a late draft. Readings by John Presley, Phillip Herring, David Edwards, and Tom Staley have been extremely helpful. Understandings in matters of interpretation have come from Alice Hughes, John Presley, C. W. Spinks, William Walker, and Dunstan Ward. And Alice Hughes has been constant in discussion of all matters concerning Graves and literature of the twentieth century. I am especially grateful to William Graves for his advice, support, and friendship. I must, as well, mention Alexis Mills, who has done much to separate the wheat from the chaff of my prose. Quotations from Robert Graves’s published work and from unpublished manuscripts appear here with the permission of the A. P. Watt Ltd. and Carcanet Press on behalf of the Robert Graves Copyright Trust, the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, the Modern Poetry Collection at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Special Collections of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The photographs of Robert Graves, his family, Siegfried Sassoon, and Edward Marsh are from the Canneluñ Archive and are published here with the permission of the Robert Graves Trust. Quotations from Catherine Dalton ’s letters appear here with her permission. Reference to the letter from Carl Jung to Lawrence Durrell is included with permission from Special Collections of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Quotation from a reflection on Graves by H. E. Palmer appears with permission from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at xv Austin. Quotations from Siegfried Sassoon Diaries appear with permission from Faber and Faber, and quotations from his Complete Poems and The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston appear with permission from the Barbara Levy Literary Agency. Parts of this book have appeared as ‘‘‘Sullen Moods’: From Extant Drafts to Completed Poem’’ (Gravesiana 1:4 [December 1997]) and as ‘‘Traumas of Love and Death: Early Signs of the Goddess’’ (Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves, Association of University Presses, 2001) and are incorporated into this book with the permission of the editors , respectively Ian Firla and Patrick Quinn. I am greatly indebted to Shelley Cox of Special Collections at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; to Robert Bertholf of the Modern Poetry /Special Collection at the State University of New York at Buffalo; to Tom Staley of the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas; and to Stephen Crook and Philip Milito of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. t h e e a r ly p o e t ry of r o b e rt g r av e s xvi T H E E A R LY P O E T RY O F R O B E RT G R AV E S THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ...