Perhaps the finest love poet of our age, Robert Graves was also a man of strong opinions and stronger passions whose long life was one of extremes and contradictions. Profligate in his emotions but painstaking in his art, arrogant and pugnacious with enemies but generous and sustaining to friends, impulsive in love but careless of family: Graves bestrode the century, leaving controversy and scandal in his wake. Leaving as well the fruits of his remarkable genius.

As reckless in love as he was courageous in war, Graves abandoned a wife and four small children to run off with American poet Laura Riding. Their affair, strained by cruelties and infidelities, may well have inspired his best work. Even a serene second marriage and four more children did not deter Graves in his search for perfect love, though his "muses" became younger with each passing year.

Long-lived and infinitely complex, Graves is a challenge to any biographer. Granted unprecedented cooperation from Graves's widow and son William, Ms. Seymour has uncovered much new material. Family cooperation, coupled with the death in 1991 of Laura Riding, persuaded many to talk openly for the first time. And the biographer's understanding of the sources of Graves's work, especially the psychic wounds, contributes true insight to the paradoxes of his life.