Robert Graves
Poet
Prolific British poet, novelist, translator, and scholar whose works include No More Ghosts and I, Claudius. He was a 1934 recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
He was one of five children born to Amalie von Ranke and South London school inspector Alfred Perceval Graves.
He suffered from life-threatening lung problems on three occasions: pneumonia at age seven, a war-time injury to the lung, and Spanish influenza in 1918. He survived all three respiratory afflictions despite his doctors' dire predictions.
He had eight children between his two marriages to Nancy Nicholson and Beryl Graves. He also had an affair with poet Laura Riding, as well as a sexualized friendship with male poet Siegfried Sassoon.
He was shortlisted for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, which was ultimately awarded to author John Steinbeck.