Alfred Perceval Graves

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Alfred Perceval Graves

One page of a letter bearing Graves' signature.

Alfred Perceval Graves (22 July 1846 - 27 December 1931), was an Anglo-Irish poet, songwriter, and school inspector (HMI). His first marriage to Jane Cooper, eldest daughter of James Cooper of Cooper Hill, Co. Limerick, resulted in five children: the journalist Philip Graves, Mary, Richard, Alfred, and Susan. After the death of Jane, he married Amy von Ranke, daughter of Heinrich von Ranke, and produced another five children: Clarissa, Rosaleen, the poet and scholar Robert Graves, the journalist Charles Patrick Graves, and John.

Life and work

He was born in Dublin on 22 July 1846, the son of The Rt. Rev Charles Graves, bishop of Limerick, by his wife Selina, the daughter of John Cheyne (1777–1836), the Physician-General to the Forces in Ireland. Alfred was educated in England at Windermere College, and Trinity College, Dublin. His paternal grandmother Helena was a Perceval, and the granddaughter of the Earl of Egmont. His grandfather, John Crosbie Graves, was a first cousin of 'Ireland's most celebrated surgeon', Robert James Graves.

In 1869 he entered the Civil Service as clerk in the Home Office, where he remained until he became an inspector of schools in 1874 . He was a contributor of prose and verse to the Spectator, The Athenaeum, John Bull, and Punch magazine.

He took a leading part in the revival of Irish letters. He was for several years president of the Irish Literary Society, and was the author of the famous ballad of Father O'Flynn and many other songs and ballads. In collaboration with Charles Stanford he published Songs of Old Ireland (1882), Irish Songs and Ballads (1893), the airs of which are taken from the Petrie MSS.; the airs of his Irish Folk-Songs (1897) were arranged by Charles Wood, with whom he also collaborated on Songs of Erin (1901).

He published an autobiography, To Return to All That in 1930, as a response to his son Robert's Goodbye to All That.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links

• Songs of Old Ireland: A Collection of Fifty Irish Melodies with words by Alfred Perceval Graves and music arranged by Charles Villiers Stanford
• Works by Alfred Perceval Graves at Project Gutenberg

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