Alfred Perceval Graves - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES (1846-), Irish writer, was born in Dublin, the son of the bishop of Limerick. He was educated at Windermere College, and took high honours at Dublin University. In 1869 he entered the Civil Service as clerk in the Home Office, where he remained until he became in 1874 an inspector of schools. He was a constant contributor of prose and verse to the Spectator, The Athenaeum, John Bull, and Punch, and took a leading part in the revival of Irish letters. He was for several years president of the Irish Literary Society, and is the author of the famous ballad of "Father O'Flynn" and many other songs and ballads. In collaboration with Sir C. V. 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 in Songs of Erin (1901).

His brother, Charles L. Graves (b. 1856), educated at Marlborough and at Christ Church, Oxford, also became well known as a journalist, author of two volumes of parodies, The Hawarden Horace (1894) and More Hawarden Horace (1896), and of skits in prose and verse. An admirable musical critic, his Life and Letters of Sir George Grove (1903) is a model biography.