Vintage International

3 total works

Goodbye to All That

by Robert Graves

Published 1 February 1958

In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that occurred as a result of the First World War. Written after the war and as he was leaving his birthplace, he thought, forever, Good-Bye to All That bids farewell not only to England and his English family and friends, but also to a way of life. Tracing his upbringing from his solidly middle-class Victorian childhood through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, often wry autobiography goes on to depict the horrors and disillusionment of the Great War, from life in the trenches and the loss of dear friends, to the stupidity of government bureaucracy and the absurdity of English class stratification. Paul Fussell has hailed it as ""the best memoir of the First World War"" and has written the introduction to this new edition that marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war. An enormous success when it was first issued, it continues to find new readers in the thousands each year and has earned its designation as a true classic.

I, Claudius

by Robert Graves

Published December 1939

The Julio-Claudian family possessed all the brutality and dysfunctionality of the Sopranos, but with fewer (or no) constraints on their power to injure outsiders or each other. From this raw material Robert Graves brilliantly recreates a world of power, intrigue and cruelty, a world permeated through and through with the threat of sudden and violent death. In the process he raises striking, sometimes unanswerable questions: was Tiberius really as depraved as Suetonius suggests? Was Livia the true power behind Augustus' throne? And did she really poison all those people? Did Caligula seriously plan to make his horse a consul? Whether or not we can answer these questions, this was certainly a world in which such things could happen.

With an Afterword by Tom Griffith.

Claudius the God

by Robert Graves

Published 23 October 1989

Robert Graves begins anew the tumultuous life of the Roman who became emporer in spite of himself. Captures the vitality, splendor, and decadence of the Roman world at the point of its decline.