The quintessential memoir of the generation of Englishmen who suffered in World War I is among the bitterest autobiographies ever written. Robert Graves's stripped-to-the-bone prose seethes with contempt for his class, his country, his military superiors, and the civilians who mindlessly cheered the carnage from the safety of home. His portrait of the stupidity and petty cruelties endemic in England's elite schools is almost as scathing as his depiction of trench warfare. Nothing could equal Graves's bone-chilling litany of meaningless death, horrific encounters with gruesomely decaying corpses, and even more appalling confrontations with the callousness and arrogance of the military command. Yet this scarifying book is consistently enthralling. Graves is a superb storyteller, and there's clearly something liberating about burning all your bridges at 34 (his age when Good-Bye to All That was first published in 1929). He conveys that feeling of exhilaration to his readers in a pell-mell rush of words that remains supremely lucid. Better known as a poet, historical novelist, and critic, Graves in this one work seems more like an English Hemingway, paring his prose to the minimum and eschewing all editorializing because it would bring him down to the level of the phrase- and war-mongers he despises. --Wendy Smith


From Book News, Inc.
A reissue of the original 1929 version. Robert Graves' nephew and biographer serves as editor and provides annotations and a fascinating introduction. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Midwest Book Review
Good-Bye to All That is Robert Graves' classic 1929 autobiography with its searing account of life in the trenches of the First World War. In 1957 a then middle-age Graves totally revised his text, robbing it of the painfully raw edge that had helped to make it an international bestseller. By 1957 major changes in his private life had taken place: Graves was no longer living with the American poet Laura Riding, under whose influence and in whose honor the original had been written. By cutting out all references to Riding, by deleting passages which revealed the mental strains under which he had labored, and by meticulously editing the entire text, Graves destroyed most of what had made it so powerful but also removed it from the only context in which it could be fully understood. Richard Perceval Graves in this Berghahn Books edition as re-published the original 1929 text on the occasion of Graves' 100th anniversary. Edited and annotated by Robert Graves' nephew and biographer, this restored edition with its lucid introduction greatly enhances its value and returns a great autobiographical work to its original state.


The Sunday Times
...he saw and heard things the civilised world of 1914 had never dreamed of. What could be described he described in his masterpiece Good-bye To All That (1929) now available...in its original raw version, not the tidied-up 1957 rewrite familiar to modern readers.


The Sunday Telegraph
As for his life...begin with his own classic 1929 memoir, Good-bye To All That - not in his 1957 revision, but in the original version...The first Graves, at whatever period of his life, is usually the best Graves.


Book Description
In this autobiography, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental and universal loss of innocence that occurred as a result of the First World War. Written after the war and as he was leaving his birthplace, he thought, forever, Good-Bye to All That bids farewell not only to England and his English family and friends, but also to a way of life. Tracing his upbringing from his solidly middle-class Victorian childhood through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, often wry autobiography goes on to depict the horrors and disillusionment of the Great War, from life in the trenches and the loss of dear friends, to the stupidity of government bureaucracy and the absurdity of English class stratification. Paul Fussell has hailed it as ""the best memoir of the First World War"" and has written the introduction to this new edition that marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war. An enormous success when it was first issued, it continues to find new readers in the thousands each year and has earned its designation as a true classic.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Autobiography by Robert Graves, published in 1929 and revised in 1957. It is considered a classic of the disillusioned postwar generation. Divided into anecdotal scenes and satiric episodes, Good-Bye to All That is infused with a dark humor. It chronicles the author's experiences as a student at Charterhouse School in London and as a teenaged soldier in France during World War I, where he sustained severe wounds in combat. His memoir continues after the war with descriptions of his life in Wales, at Oxford University, and in Egypt.


From the Publisher
English novelist, poet, and essayist Graves, author of I, Claudius describes the break he made with his past in 1929. In chronicling his youth, World War I experiences, and years at Oxford, Graves gives parallel accounts of the end of his own innocence and that of the world prior to the Great War.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this soldier's story, first published in 1929, poet Robert Graves traces the monumental loss of innocence that occurred as a result of World War I. Written after the war and as Graves was leaving England - he thought, forever - Good-bye to All That bids farewell not only to his birthplace. By the year of his departure, a way of life had ended, and England and the modern world would never be the same. Tracing Graves's upbringing through his entry into the war at age twenty-one as a patriotic captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, this dramatic, poignant, and often wry memoir depicts all the horrors and disillusionment of the Great War, from life in the trenches and the loss of dear friends to the absurdity of government bureaucracy.

FROM THE CRITICS

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