Miranda Seymour is the acclaimed author of the innovative and widely admired A RING OF CONSPIRATORS, a study of Henry James and his circle, and OTTOLINE MORRELL: LIFE ON THE GRAND SCALE, twelve times selected for Book of the Year in 1992. She also writes novels and children's books, and is currently researching the biography of Helle Nice, the pioneer woman racing driver, to be published by Scribner in 2004.
Seymour (Ottoline Morell: Life on the Grand Scale, LJ 8/93) divides Graves's life "on the edge" into five parts, each of which explores the effect of a specific woman on his life and writing. In Seymour's opinion, these women became his source of inspiration. Seymour explores and develops the details of Graves's life but all too often fails to relate what impact the life's events had on such classics as The White Goddess and I, Claudius. The most interesting part of her biography is the account of Graves's experience as an officer in World War I, which afflicted him mentally throughout his life. Overall, Graves comes across as a man of strong conviction‘pugnacious with enemies, generous with friends. Graves believed, "Poetry contains nothing haphazard," yet his life, as revealed in this biography, was ironically very haphazard; for example, he left his wife and four children to live with the American poet Laura Riding. This is a detailed, anecdotal biography for informed readers.‘Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, Pa.
Robert Graves (1895-1985), egocentric, obstreperous novelist, poet, critic and scholar of classical myth (The White Goddess), mythologized his own life, according to this intimate biography. Shell-shocked in WWI, Graves, enmeshed in homosexual circles, abruptly married strong-minded feminist Nancy Nicholson but abandoned her and their four children for charismatic American poet Laura Riding, leaving England and settling with her in Mallorca in 1930. Graves endorsed Riding's megalomaniacal belief in her supernatural powers, idealizing her as a savior and prophet of world peace, and as his muse, embodiment of the all-powerful ancient Goddess worshipped in matriarchal societies. But when Riding ditched him, Graves discovered the muse no longer resided in her. Despite the loving domesticity provided by his second wife, Beryl Pritchard, Graves pursued a series of young women, turning each into his muse. This, observes Seymour, was his way of atoning for guilt over the men he had killed in WWI, Riding's suicide attempt and the family he had abandoned. British novelist Seymour, biographer of Henry James and Ottoline Morrell, had full cooperation from Graves's widowed second wife and son William in writing this demythologizing biography. Photos. (Oct.)
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