Robert von Ranke Graves was a noted English poet, classical scholar, translator and novelist. Born July 24, 1895, in Wimbeldon, England, Graves was one of five children born to Alfred Perceval Graves, a poet and Gaelic scholar, and Amalie von Ranke Graves. (Graves's father also had five children from a previous marriage.)

After attending Charterhouse, a private English preparatory school, Graves in 1913 received a scholarship to St. John's College at Oxford. But with the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted and was seriously injured in 1916. This was clearly a crucial event in his life. During the Somme offensive, he had been abandoned as dead and only much later rescued from a pile of corpses. He was eventually nursed back to health and sent back to the front, but the event would scar Graves for years. While recovering from the wounds, he published his first collection of poetry...