What type of genre did Robery Ranke's Graves White Goddess fit into?
Robert Graves Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985), also known as Robert Ranke Graves and most commonly Robert Graves, was an English poet, novelist, critic and classicist. In a way similar to Oscar Wilde, Robert Graves was a Celticist and student of Irish mythology, by the influence of his father Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet — with William Wilde, these families were inheritors of the Gaelic revival. He produced more than 140 works. Graves's poems—together with his translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths; his memoir of his early life, including his role in the First World War, "Good-Bye to All That"; and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, "The White Goddess"—have never been out of print. Irish literature deeply affected Graves' White Goddess theories, specifically the genre aisling.
Mary Hays Mary Hays (1759–1843) was an autodidact intellectual who published essays, poetry, novels, and several works on famous (and infamous) women. She is remembered for her early feminism, and her close relations to dissenting and radical thinkers of her time including Robert Robinson, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, and William Frend. She was born in 1759, into a family of Protestant dissenters who rejected the practices of the Church of England (the established church). Hays was described by those who disliked her as 'the baldest disciple of [Mary] Wollstonecraft' by "The Anti Jacobin Magazine", attacked as an 'unsex'd female' by clergyman Robert Polwhele, and provoked controversy through her long life with her rebellious writings. When Hays's fiancé John Eccles died on the eve of their marriage, Hays expected to die of grief herself. But this apparent tragedy meant that she escaped an ordinary future as wife and mother, remaining unmarried. She seized the chance to make a career for herself in the larger world as a writer.