Milestones

DIED. Robert Graves, 90, idiosyncratic, prolific British man of letters who considered himself foremost a poet but who was also a biographer, critic, translator and editor and is probably best known as a historical novelist, most memorably for I, Claudius (1934), a rich reconstruction of Roman life that became a hit mini-series in 1976; in Deia, Majorca, Spain. Graves began publishing his precise, sensuous lyrics while an officer in World War I, during which he was seriously wounded; he recounted that part of his life in the popular autobiography Goodbye to All That (1929). Among his most controversial works was The White Goddess (1948), an erudite but eccentric study of poetic myth.