The Robert Graves Society
The Robert Graves Society was launched in 1995 during the Robert Graves Centenary Conference at St John's College, Oxford. The object of the Society is to promote interest in, and research on, the life and works of Robert Graves (1895–1985), author of some 140 books of poetry, fiction, biography, criticism, anthropology, social history, mythology, biblical studies, translation, and children's books.
The Society's membership of more than 200 experts and enthusiasts forms the core of an international research community which includes literary scholars, historians, classicists, archaeologists, biblical scholars, bibliographers, editors, writers and translators – besides, of course, general readers.
The Society organises an international conference every two years. Since the 1995 Centenary Conferences in Oxford and Mallorca, the following conferences have been held:
- 1998: Third International Robert Graves Conference, 'Robert Graves and the White Goddess', University of Manchester, September 1998;
- 2000: Fourth International Robert Graves Conference, 'Robert Graves in America',
State University of New York at Buffalo, June 2000; - 2002: Fifth International Robert Graves Conference, 'Robert Graves and the Uses of History', The British School at Rome, July 2002;
- 2004: Sixth International Robert Graves Conference, 'Robert Graves and the
Experience of War', University of London Institute in Paris and British Council, Paris, July 2004.
The Seventh International Robert Graves Conference, on 'Robert Graves and the Art of Collaboration', will be held in Palma and Deia, Mallorca, from Tuesday 4 July to Saturday 8 July 2006. To register or submit a paper online, please click here.
The Society also publishes the leading journal of Graves studies, Gravesiana. This scholarly journal appears yearly, and from 2005 will be edited by Professor Grevel Lindop, formerly Professor of Romantic and Early Victorian Studies at the University of Manchester, and Dr Fran Brearton, of Queen's University, Belfast.
The first Honorary President of the Robert Graves Society was the poet's widow, Beryl Graves. After her death in 2003, she was succeeded by the eminent political scientist and anthropologist Dr Sally Chilver, Robert Graves's niece. The Honorary Vice-President is Professor John Kelly, of St John's College, Oxford.
The Officers and Council of the Society are:
Honorary President
Dr Sally Chilver
Formerly Principal, Bedford College, University of London and of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.
President
Dunstan Ward
University of London Institute in Paris
11 rue de Constantine
75340 Paris Cedex 07
France
e-mail: dunstanward@yahoo.com
telephone: +33 1 43 29 33 48
fax: +33 1 45 50 31 55
