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Antigua, Penny, Puce
=Rusty brown, serrated
- GenresFiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 1936
About the author
Robert Graves
657 books2,124 followersRobert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. Born in Wimbledon, he received his early education at King's College School and Copthorne Prep School, Wimbledon & Charterhouse School and won a scholarship to St John's College, Oxford. While at Charterhouse in 1912, he fell in love with G.H. Johnstone, a boy of fourteen ("Dick" in Goodbye to All That) When challenged by the headmaster he defended himself by citing Plato, Greek poets, Michelangelo & Shakespeare, "who had felt as I did".
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
At the outbreak of WWI, Graves enlisted almost immediately, taking a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He published his first volume of poems, Over the Brazier, in 1916. He developed an early reputation as a war poet and was one of the first to write realistic poems about his experience of front line conflict. In later years he omitted war poems from his collections, on the grounds that they were too obviously "part of the war poetry boom". At the Battle of the Somme he was so badly wounded by a shell-fragment through the lung that he was expected to die, and indeed was officially reported as 'died of wounds'. He gradually recovered. Apart from a brief spell back in France, he spent the rest of the war in England.
One of Graves's closest friends at this time was the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was also an officer in the RWF. In 1917 Sassoon tried to rebel against the war by making a public anti-war statement. Graves, who feared Sassoon could face a court martial, intervened with the military authorities and persuaded them that he was suffering from shell shock, and to treat him accordingly. Graves also suffered from shell shock, or neurasthenia as it is sometimes called, although he was never hospitalised for it.
Biographers document the story well. It is fictionalised in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration. The intensity of their early relationship is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in Graves's collection Fairies & Fusiliers (1917), which contains a plethora of poems celebrating their friendship. Through Sassoon, he also became friends with Wilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised. Owen attended Graves's wedding to Nancy Nicholson in 1918, presenting him with, as Graves recalled, "a set of 12 Apostle spoons".
Following his marriage and the end of the war, Graves belatedly took up his place at St John's College, Oxford. He later attempted to make a living by running a small shop, but the business failed. In 1926 he took up a post at Cairo University, accompanied by his wife, their children and the poet Laura Riding. He returned to London briefly, where he split with his wife under highly emotional circumstances before leaving to live with Riding in Deià, Majorca. There they continued to publish letterpress books under the rubric of the Seizin Press, founded and edited the literary journal Epilogue, and wrote two successful academic books together: A Survey of Modernist Poetry (1927) and A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (1928).
In 1927, he published Lawrence and the Arabs, a commercially successful biography of T.E. Lawrence. Good-bye to All That (1929, revised and republished in 1957) proved a success but cost him many of his friends, notably Sassoon. In 1934 he published his most commercially successful work, I, Claudius. Using classical sources he constructed a complexly compelling tale of the life of the Roman emperor Claudius, a tale extended in Claudius the God (1935). Another historical novel by Graves, Count Belisarius (1938), recounts the career of the Byzantine general Belisarius.
During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasingly severe memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to the end of his working life. By 1975 he had published more than 140 works. He survived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until he died from heart
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 27, 2015
Clever piece of fluff, becoming openly farcical by the end. It's about a feud between a brother and sister over a very valuable stamp. Stamp collecting is made to stand as a bone of contention between the sexes: boys are possessive and precious about their collections and won't let their sisters look at them because they'll mess something up. Jane, as a Machiavellian child, established a tenuous claim to shared ownership of the collection as a kind of investigation into masculine ways. At the very beginning Oliver is an Everyman sort of figure, with Jane as a siren of meaningless malice asserting a crypto-sexual attraction of hatefulness. After a bit we see Jane's side of things, and it is clearly Jane's side of things that Graves is on. Oliver becomes repulsive and detestable, very much in an Everyman sort of way. This was an enjoyably bathetic battle between the sexes.
January 23, 2012
A great study of sister-brother hatred beginning in childhood, extending to adulthood - a sister studies her slightly elder brother with patient determination during their childhood - as one reads, it seems merely for revenge and a power game vis a vis their parents; later it emerges that through his lies, idiocies, vanities, she is learning to become a great actress and manager of men and women. Also it's hilarious. Philip Larkin thought it was a fantastically successful job - funny and intelligent, and he's right.
April 14, 2024
A wonderful read. Robert Graves steps outside his persona as a classicist, historical novelist and poet to reveal his comic and satirical abilities as he engages a PG Wodehouse - Evelyn Waugh mode just to show he can. I have a liking for books written and set between the wars, so it ticked that box as well. Features his only foray into predicting the future, where he correctly sees the nosering becoming more fashionable. I see Terry Pratchett's Going Postal soon in mine.
February 24, 2026
Καυστική αντιπαράθεση μεταξύ των δύο φύλων. Δύο αδέλφια ( αδελφός και αδελφή) τσακώνονται την δεκαετία του 1930 στην Αγγλία, για την ιδιοκτησία ενός πολύτιμου γραμματοσήμου. Ο άντρας επιδεικνύει μια απίστευτη ξεροκεφαλιά αλλά και πονηριά σε βαθμό να τελέσει έναν γάμο που δεν επιθυμεί προκειμένου να αποκτήσει το γραμματόσημο. Η γυναίκα από την άλλη χρησιμοποιεί και αυτή όλη την πονηριά του κόσμου σε βαθμο ποινικού αδικήματος, για τον ίδιο λόγο. Ένα υπέροχο ψυχογράφημα που δεν κολακεύει κανέναν και μια απεικόνιση των ηθών της Αγγλίας των αρχών του 20ου αιώνα. Αν σας αρέσει ο Μπερνάρντ Σο και ο Γουάιλντ, μάλλον θα ευχαριστηθείτε και αυτό το βιβλίο.
June 25, 2025
[Random House] (1937). HB/DJ. 1/1. 326 Pages. Purchased from Begging Bowl Books.
A somewhat comedic yarn of sibling rivalry.
The protagonists - Jane and Oliver - are most unpleasant.
I’m fond of courtroom scenes so the hefty serving of adversarial justice was welcome.
Further boxes were ticked with auctions and collectibles featuring.
Overall, though, I feel that the novel’s overlong; the narrative’s attenuated; my interest faltered towards the end - it spirals into nonsense.
A weaker offering from a brilliant writer.
A somewhat comedic yarn of sibling rivalry.
The protagonists - Jane and Oliver - are most unpleasant.
I’m fond of courtroom scenes so the hefty serving of adversarial justice was welcome.
Further boxes were ticked with auctions and collectibles featuring.
Overall, though, I feel that the novel’s overlong; the narrative’s attenuated; my interest faltered towards the end - it spirals into nonsense.
A weaker offering from a brilliant writer.
October 30, 2024
αναμένοντας τη διαθεσιμότητα Αυτού, του Κλαύδιου, δανείστηκα το Γραμματόσημο της Αντίγκουα. "μπορώ να γράψω κι έτσι", λέει ο Graves. ανάλαφρα περίτεχνη εύρυθμη ροή γραπτού λόγου. πέραν τούτου..
υγ. αναμένοντας την αποκατάσταση της ατμοσφαιρικής κυκλοφορίας, περιμένοντας τη βροχή, με καλύτερες πιθανότητες από τους Vladimir και Estragon.
υγ. αναμένοντας την αποκατάσταση της ατμοσφαιρικής κυκλοφορίας, περιμένοντας τη βροχή, με καλύτερες πιθανότητες από τους Vladimir και Estragon.
December 2, 2019
Una novelita burguesa que gira en torno a la disputa infantil de dos hermanos por un peculiar sello de correos.
Nada recomendable
Nada recomendable
August 12, 2016
No holds barred, no quarter given, sibling conflict between brother and sister over stamp album from childhood to adult life - fantastic - and the glimpses into future fashions conceived from 1930s at the end are fun as well and don't seem so outlandish now. I had no idea I would enjoy a novel about stamps so much...
October 1, 2016
Story about a brother and sister who from childhood on are fighting over a post stamp. The arrogant, generalizing writing style and superiority tone of the writer doesn't appeal to me. After two chapters, I was done with it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews