After a brief hiatus, Gravesiana returns with a summer miscellany. Beginning the section ‘historical trace’, Frank Kersnowski reflects on his visit with Robert Graves in 1969, which capped a series of interviews with Irish poets described in his book The Outsiders (1975). Some of those encounters are glimpsed here in memorable exchanges with John Montague, Thomas Kinsella, David Jones, Seamus Heaney, and others. The article links out to a video presentation recorded for the conference ‘Robert Graves and World War One’ (Oxford 2016).

In ‘Good-bye to All That: “Mummy’s Bedtime Story Book”’, Jean Moorcroft Wilson examines Siegfried Sassoon’s snarkily edited copy of Good-bye (1929). Unlike Edmund Blunden’s celebrated annotated copy, the subject of Graves’s nimble essay ‘The Bomb under my Monument’, Sassoon’s copy was sequestered in private hands until its recent acquisition by the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

John Cooksey continues our focus on Good-bye to All That, tracing the military career of the rough and tumble soldier Charles Dickens – born Charles E. Dickin – to whom Graves makes glancing though admiring reference. For various infractions, including striking a superior officer, assault, drunkenness and using obscenities, ‘Dickens spent just shy of a year of his army career prior to the First World War imprisoned with hard labour and a staggering 302 days confined to barracks’ – a truly Herculean feat.

Eric McElroy provides a detailed critical conspectus of the English piano music of the early twentieth century, revealing intriguing parallels between English war poets and the composers Cyril Scott, Lord Berners, William Baines, John Ireland, and Arnold Bax. Notes McElroy, ‘The soldiers and civilians of the First World War are gone, but their feelings and expressions have been preserved in the music of their time’.

In conversation with Charles Mundye, poet Ruth Fainlight reflects on her meetings with Graves in Mallorca in the 1950s, his influence on her writing and that of her husband, the poet-novelist Alan Sillitoe, and her life on Mallorca. We have sought to place her recollections in context with two of her poems, ‘Inside a Yellow Laburnum Tent’, and ‘Snowdrops’.

Our miscellany concludes with three reviews of six books, including Lissa Paul’s extended treatment of War Poems, edited by Charles Mundye.

A Note on Names

In 2014 The Robert Graves Society decided to alter the name of its journal by striking Gravesiana. However, after brief consultation with members of the Editorial Board, I have chosen to delay title change temporarily for the following reasons: in view of the interruption to our publishing schedule, I thought keeping ‘Gravesiana’ in the title would more clearly assert the journal’s identity: Gravesiana has not gone gentle. The fact that the previous issue, summer 2014, began a new volume – volume four – also raises a potential bibliographical problem. A gap of three years coupled to the absence of issues two through four might generate confusion among bibliographers and scholars regarding the putative existence of phantom issues. Numbering our newly renamed journal number two seemed similarly problematic, and perhaps overly modest: A new name should arrive with greater fanfare. The plan is now to complete volume four with two more issues, retire ‘Gravesiana’, as desired, and then begin again.

As incoming editor, and a long-time reader of the journal, I would like to offer my warm thanks to Dunstan Ward for his many masterful contributions to Gravesiana as editor (2010-2014), and to express my sincere gratitude for his willingness to remain on the Editorial Board.