This volume for the OUP Classical Preferences series, which originates from a workshop in St Andrews in 2009, brings forth a welcome discussion on Graves's contribution to the classical tradition. With scholarship from Classicists as well as critics from other humanities departments, these sixteen chapters explore Graves's engagement with the Classics in his war and love poetry, translations, mythology studies, radio programmes and historical novels, as well as the reception of his oeuvre. Rather than dismissing or promoting Graves's contribution to the classical tradition, however, G. explains in his introduction that the book aims to stimulate a debate about the value of Graves's contribution. Readings are further informed by interviews with Graves, his letters and his autobiography.

The first two chapters discuss the Claudius novels. In Graves's lifetime, these books were criticised for presenting creative licence as historical fact, but here the debate moves beyond such surface-level discussions. A. Bennett (Chapter 1) investigates why the novels, despite continual popularity, receive little study or appreciation; in Chapter 2, D. Kennedy and E. O'Gorman observe how Graves characterises Livy and Pollio in a manner that lets him ‘negotiate the boundaries of fact and fiction’ and validate his own approach to writing historical novels (p. 45). Yet Graves often rewrote history to look the way he wanted, particularly if he could create powerful female characters where he found none. In Chapter 3, S. Murnaghan looks at Homer's Daughter, whose strange premise makes Nausicaa the true author of the Odyssey myth. Murnaghan interprets the book as a kind of modern Verae Historiae and is thus able to set aside Graves's distracting thesis and instead show how his sincere belief in Samuel Butler's Nausicaa-hypothesis enabled Graves to ‘write a novel about an ancient girl that can claim historical accuracy’ (p. 69). In Chapter 4, S. Tougher explores gender in Count Belisarius, where Graves intertwines his voice with a eunuch narrator, a character added only at the suggestion of Graves's ‘prophet’, Laura Riding.

S. Sabnis details the origins of Graves's prose translation of The Golden Ass – including his discussions with T.E. Lawrence about how Apuleius’ voice should be handled – and the book's subsequent reception. Her chapter, the sixth, proceeds nicely into P. Burton's paper, which analyses Graves's various approaches to his major translations (The Golden Ass, the Pharsalia, Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars and The Anger of Achilles). Historians with an interest in Graves or Late Antiquity will be partial to J. Coulston's look at warfare in Count Belisarius (Chapter 5). Coulston dissects the novel's presentation of combat in relation to both the sixth century and Graves's experiences in World War I. In Chapter 12, T. Palaima proposes that Graves eschewed Classical references in his war poetry, as well as the graphic imagery found in poems by Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, because of post-traumatic stress. Palaima then expands his analysis to generations of authors reared on Classical texts, immersed in the classroom-taught bloodshed of what he calls a ‘historically far off, never-never land’, before entering real conflict (pp. 251–4). The chapter has a markedly didactic tone, which may alienate readers looking for more impartial readings of war poetry, but will captivate others with its sweeping interdisciplinary discussion.

Chapters 8–10 take Graves to task on his matriarchal trappings. S. Ihm (Chapter 8) explains how Graves's objective in The Greek Myths was to reconstruct a ‘true myth’ (i.e. a matriarchal Pelasgian myth) by stripping away what he perceived as foreign Achaean and Dorian influences (p. 168). In Chapter 9, V. Zajko elucidates how Graves's methodology, which ‘involved a figuration of the texts of the past as puzzles to be solved’, was informed by nineteenth-century German philologists (p. 184). In particular, as I. Hurst explains in Chapter 10, Graves accepted Nietzsche's view of Greece as Apollonian elements (order) against Dionysian elements (religious ritual and dance). Unsurprisingly, Graves gave precedent to Dionysian elements and viewed Apollonian myths as products of a patriarchal culture that usurped a lost matriarchy (p. 210).

J. Burnside contributes an outstanding eleventh chapter, tracing Graves's ever-evolving view of love whilst drawing parallels between the poet's fear of – and eventual desire for – loss of self, which Burnside compares to the arresting passions of Narcissus. Burnside reads Echo as an example of solipsism, rather than external love, whom Narcissus must reject if he is to lose himself in a wider world of ‘love-friendship’ where his own notion of self is challenged. This loss of self serves as Burnside's model for psychoanalysing the young Graves's fear of self-consuming ‘romantic love’; as Graves matures, Burnside argues, the pleasure of losing himself in passion (as Narcissus did) becomes desirable and represents ‘love-friendship’, as seen in poems like ‘Singleness of Love’ or ‘Beatrice and Dante’ (pp. 223–32). Though just twelve pages, Burnside's thought-provoking paper moves through Ian D. Suttie's work on Freudian psychoanalysis and Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet (though ‘Anne’ is spelled incorrectly) to lucidly blend poetry, theory and biography.

The final four chapters look at the reception of Graves's work: J. Perry analyses reviews of I, Claudius in Mussolini's Italy (Chapter 13); G. outlines the pre-production labyrinth that ultimately prevented I, Claudius from reaching cinemas (Chapter 14); and in Chapter 15, M. Morris details Graves's history with broadcast media, where the poet repeatedly positioned himself against Classics scholars (p. 309). The book concludes with A. Wrigley's paper on the prize-winning and far-reaching radio adaptation of The Anger of Achilles.

For many readers, The White Goddess (now published by Faber and Faber) or The Greek Myths (a Penguin Classic) are their primary encounter with ancient mythology. As Ihm shows, Graves's white goddess shaped second-wave feminist authors such as Monica Sjöö and Heide Göttner-Abendroth, and his reputation as a scholar became an academic anchor in the footnotes of psychological studies by Jennifer Woolger and Dr Roger Woolger (who use Graves as ‘a valuable witness for a matriarchy in Crete’) (pp. 176–9). New age groups have adopted his white goddess as a religious icon, and even latter-twentieth-century poets such as Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes were led by Graves to believe in the shamanic calling of the poet (p. 203). Although he claimed not to be a Classicist, these receptions make understanding Graves's role in the classical tradition a necessity. Some of this volume may be familiar to readers with a sustained enthusiasm for Graves, but the breadth of subjects covered (thoroughly indexed in ten pages), as well as the book's robust bibliography, will make it required reading for anyone with an interest in this controversial and captivating author.