Friday, July 31, 2009

Robert Graves reads his own obituary

In July 1916, a few days before his twentieth birthday, Captain Robert Graves was seriously wounded by an exploding shell on the Western Front. While he was recovering in hospital his parents were told that he'd died and were given his personal effects. His obituary appeared in the Times. He would live another 70 years. The poet and novelist appears twice in A Book of Ages.

Another interesting bit of obituaria, from page 288. When Artie Shaw died in 2004, at age 94, his New York Times obituary appeared under the byline of a writer who'd died two years earlier.

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