The Robert Graves Society promotes interest in and research on the life and work of Robert Graves (1895–1985), author of some 140 books of poetry, fiction, biography, criticism, anthropology, social history, mythology, biblical studies, translation, and for children.
The Robert Graves Society was launched in 1995 during the Robert Graves Centenary Conference at St John's College, Oxford, England. Past presidents of the Society have been Professor Patrick Quinn (elected 1995), Professor Dunstan Ward (elected 2000), and Professor Fran Brearton (elected 2010). The current President of the Society is Dr Charles Mundye, FEA, Head of Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, who was elected President at the Society's 2014 Conference in Mallorca.
The Society's membership of both experts and interested lay people 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 of Graves's 140 published books.
Centenary conferences were held in Oxford and Mallorca in 1995, organised with support from St John's College, Oxford and the British Council in Spain, respectively. Every two years since a third conference held in 1998 at the University of Manchester, the Society has organised a major international conference on aspects of Robert Graves's work, his collaborators, his critics, and his life in general. In 2006 it was decided to hold these conferences alternately in Mallorca, in co-operation with with the Fundació Robert Graves and the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), Spain, and at St John's College, Oxford, England. On alternate years, the Society normally organises other events such as lunches, or joint conferences or meetings with other literary societies, but these smaller events have been suspended in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first Honorary President of the Robert Graves Society was Beryl Graves, Robert's widow. After her death in 2003, she was succeeded by Robert's niece, the eminent political scientist and anthropologist Dr Sally Chilver. Following Dr Chilver's death in 2014, William Graves, Robert's son, literary executor , and Director of the Fundació Robert Graves, was elected the Society's new Honorary President at its 2014 conference in Mallorca. The Honorary Vice-President is Professor John Kelly of St John's College, Oxford, England.
