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Lot 164

GRAVES (ROBERT)
Collection formed by John ('Mish') Linnell, an Oxford friend of Robert Graves, comprising Graves's autograph manuscript, signed ("Robert Graves") of his poem 'A Reversal'; and 3 others

27 November 2018, 13:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

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GRAVES (ROBERT)

Collection formed by John ('Mish') Linnell, an Oxford friend of Robert Graves, comprising Graves's autograph manuscript, signed ("Robert Graves") of his poem 'A Reversal', in two eight-line stanzas beginning "The old man in his fast car/ Leaves Achilles lagging...", 1 page, 4to; an autograph letter signed ("Robert Graves") to "Dear Mish", addressed from "Barset Asylum/ Hammersmith/ W6" [i.e. 35A St Peter's Square], explaining that "I am not here really", that his wife Nancy is in a cottage in Cumberland, and the children on a barge on the Thames and "I am very well thank you"; adding that he recently had a letter from Buckingham Palace "& that's all the news" and in a postscript that "I am supposed to have delusions about my friends", 1 page, folio, Hammersmith [1927], tipped into a first edition of Poems (1924-26), Heinemann, 1927; together with copies of The Feather Bed (Hogarth Press, 1923, number 47 of 250 signed copies) and Mockbeggar Hall (Hogarth Press, 1924, spine torn), both with cover designs by William Nicholson (4)

Footnotes

'I AM NOT HERE REALLY... I AM SUPPOSED TO HAVE DELUSIONS' – Robert Graves in the period while still suffering from his experiences of the trenches, and falling under the sway of Laura Riding. In May 1927, the 'Trinity' of Robert Graves, his wife Nancy, and Laura Riding, moved to 35A St Peter's Square, Hammersmith, soon after taking a houseboat on the Thames for Nancy and the children; with Nancy increasingly spending her time in Cumberland. (A 1926 edition of Trollope's Last Chronicle of Barset can be found in Graves's working library, now at St John's, Oxford.) The reference to receiving a letter from Buckingham Palace would appear to date the letter to later in the summer of 1927, when Graves spent twelve frantic weeks writing his biography Lawrence and the Arabs. During his research for the book, Graves 'even wrote to Buckingham Palace "get the truth of the famous interview with George V" and was delighted when the reply from the king actually "improved on the story T.E." had told him, about refusing the medals offered' (Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That, 2018, p.338). The poem 'A Reversal' was first collected in Graves's Whipperginny (1923). We understand from the late Hugh Linnell's son that Graves and his father had been at Oxford together after the Great War and remained friends thereafter.

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