In a hardcover omnibus for the first time: the beloved novels about the unlikely, overlooked man who survived the turbulent reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and became Emperor of Rome in spite of himself
A grandson of Mark Antony, young Claudius is mistaken for a weakling and an idiot because of his stutter and his physical infirmities, dismissed as insignificant by his ambitious relatives as they compete for power. He grows up learning to use his reputation for harmlessness as a shield and spends his time writing a secret history of the first three emperors of Rome as observed from his remarkable ringside vantage point—a dramatic tale that makes up the pages of I, Claudius.
Claudius’s impersonation of a fool protects him from the intrigues and poisonings that mark his predecessors’ reigns, including the machinations of his murderous grandmother Livia and his dangerously mad nephew Caligula. When he is unexpectedly handed power, he accepts only to avoid civil war, and Claudius the God traces his attempts to strengthen Rome and restore the Republic.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
“Graves’s achievement was to weave together an astonishingly rich and complex tapestry from threads that were found in all the available accounts of Claudius. . . . He sifted and selected those that could be made to adhere to what he believed was the most plausible explanation of what happened. . . . Graves’s creation is shot through with a further bright thread, one that is off-limits to those who try to reconstruct the historical Claudius outside the realm of fiction. This answers directly the very human question: ‘why?’ The richness of the text’s warp and weft and the psychologically satisfying answers to that question explain much about the work’s enduring appeal. However different our understanding of the historical Claudius may be from the man who speaks in these pages, Graves’ interpretation is astonishingly hard to forget.” —From the introduction by Anna Clarke
Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a poet, novelist, translator, and author of more than 120 books of history, mythology, and fiction, including the historical novel I, Claudius and the mythological study The White Goddess. Born in England, he made his home in Majorca after 1929. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961 and made an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1971. Good-bye to All That is his only autobiography.
View titles by Robert Graves
In a hardcover omnibus for the first time: the beloved novels about the unlikely, overlooked man who survived the turbulent reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and became Emperor of Rome in spite of himself
A grandson of Mark Antony, young Claudius is mistaken for a weakling and an idiot because of his stutter and his physical infirmities, dismissed as insignificant by his ambitious relatives as they compete for power. He grows up learning to use his reputation for harmlessness as a shield and spends his time writing a secret history of the first three emperors of Rome as observed from his remarkable ringside vantage point—a dramatic tale that makes up the pages of I, Claudius.
Claudius’s impersonation of a fool protects him from the intrigues and poisonings that mark his predecessors’ reigns, including the machinations of his murderous grandmother Livia and his dangerously mad nephew Caligula. When he is unexpectedly handed power, he accepts only to avoid civil war, and Claudius the God traces his attempts to strengthen Rome and restore the Republic.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
Praise
“Graves’s achievement was to weave together an astonishingly rich and complex tapestry from threads that were found in all the available accounts of Claudius. . . . He sifted and selected those that could be made to adhere to what he believed was the most plausible explanation of what happened. . . . Graves’s creation is shot through with a further bright thread, one that is off-limits to those who try to reconstruct the historical Claudius outside the realm of fiction. This answers directly the very human question: ‘why?’ The richness of the text’s warp and weft and the psychologically satisfying answers to that question explain much about the work’s enduring appeal. However different our understanding of the historical Claudius may be from the man who speaks in these pages, Graves’ interpretation is astonishingly hard to forget.” —From the introduction by Anna Clarke
Author
Robert Graves (1895-1985) was a poet, novelist, translator, and author of more than 120 books of history, mythology, and fiction, including the historical novel I, Claudius and the mythological study The White Goddess. Born in England, he made his home in Majorca after 1929. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1961 and made an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1971. Good-bye to All That is his only autobiography.
View titles by Robert Graves
