The Common Asphodel by Robert Graves

Essays on Poets and Poetry by Robert Graves

A collection of essays by the author of “The White Goddess”, linked together by some common assumptions regarding the nature of poetry. The title of the book, according to the writer, “is shorthand for saying that the popular view of what poetry is, or ought to be, has for centuries been based on sentimental misapprehensions.”

ROBERT GRAVES (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. After the war, he was granted a classical scholarship at Oxford and subsequently went to Egypt as the first professor of English at the University of Cairo. He is most noted for his series of novels about the Roman emperor Claudius and his works on mythology, such as The White Goddess.