Robert Graves Collection
Description
When Robert Graves’s widow Beryl Graves died in 2003, she bequeathed her late husband’s ‘working library’, the manuscripts letters and other materials still in Graves’s house in Deyá, Mallorca, to Oxford’s St John’s College. The collection has grown since then and it is now the largest and most varied collection of Robert Graves personal papers anywhere, holding over 15,000 Graves-related items.
The original collection of personal papers bequeathed by Beryl Graves consists largely of thousands of letters received by Robert Graves after he had returned to Deyá in the 1940s as well as some manuscripts of his literary work, his work as a literary critic and lecturer together with some diaries. To this have been added letters written by Robert Graves, most notably those to Margot Callas (Nichols).
Summary Index
A summary index of the personal papers can be downloaded here.
Online Catalogue
The vast majority of Robert Graves’s personal papers held at St John’s College are recorded on the online archival database Archives Hub at https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb473-rg. If you scroll down the landing page, you will get to a concise summary index with links:
Alternatively, if you already know what you are looking for, it is best to go to the Archives Hub homepage at https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/:
Depending on the number of results, you can then either click directly on the relevant results or narrow down your search to “St John’s College Library, University of Oxford” in the filter on the left-hand side of the screen:
Access to the Collection
If you would like to consult the collection of Robert Graves’s personal papers, please submit a Research Visit Request. Please describe the items you are interested in as as much detail as possible, including the references in Archives Hub (beginning with GB 473) where available.
Description
When Robert Graves’s widow Beryl Graves died in 2003, she bequeathed her late husband’s ‘working library’ to Oxford’s St John’s College together with his personal papers. The working library consists of over 1,500 volumes and it is still arranged in the same sequence as it was kept in by Robert Graves in Deyá, Mallorca. The collection is an interesting mix of Robert Graves’s own publications as well as those of friends, Classics and English primary and secondary literature, books connected to Graves’s research and literary interests, and Private Press publications. The working library is accompanied by three boxes of various documents and ephemera found in the books and now stored separately.
Summary Indexes
The following summary indexes are available for downloading in pdf format:
Online Catalogue
The working library is catalogued on the Oxford University’s online library catalogue SOLO.
Access to the Collection
If you would like to consult books in Robert Graves’s working library, please submit a Research Visit Request. Please describe the item(s) you are interested in as as much detail as possible, including the shelfmarks and author-title information.
General Enquiries
Please direct general enquiries to
Ms Radhika Jones
Deputy Librarian
St John’s College
St Giles’
Oxford, OX1 3JP
01865-277331
radhika.jones@sjc.ox.ac.uk
Donation of Letters from Robert Graves
Do you have any letters written by Robert Graves? If you would like to donate or sell them to be added to our collection of personal papers of Robert Graves, the largest collection of its kind, please email the Fellow Librarian, Professor Patrick Hayes (patrick.hayes@sjc.ox.ac.uk).
For information about St John's College's imaging service, please click here.
Please note that most of the items in the Robert Graves Collection are protected by copyright. St John's College is not the copyright holder of these items and if you want to use any images of Robert Graves items beyond private study/ research, it is your responsibility to ensure you have the relevant copyright permissions. Please carefully read our copyright notice below before requesting any images.
Copyright law is complicated, but as general rule of thumb in UK law the copyright usually remains with an ‘author’ (here used in the legal sense of the term) throughout their lifetime and is valid for 70 years after an author’s death when it is transferred to the author’s heirs/ estate.
St John’s College is not the copyright holder of any unpublished documents in the collection of personal papers of Robert Graves or of any publications protected by copyright in the working library of Robert Graves. The following copyright notice applies:
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted, in any form or by any means including photocopying and recording, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. It is your responsibility to ascertain the correct copyright owner and St John’s College do not accept any liability for any direct or indirect losses arising out of your use of the images you took yourself or provided to you by St John’s College. Licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency or any other reproduction rights organisation do not apply. If any unauthorised acts are carried out in relation to this copyright work, a civil claim for damages may be made and/or a criminal prosecution may result.
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.