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Literary significance and criticism

The Claudius novels, as they are called collectively, became massively popular when first published in 1934 and gained literary recognition with the award of the 1934 James Tait Black Prize for fiction. They are probably Graves's best known work aside from his myth essay The White Goddess and his own autobiography Goodbye to All That. Despite their critical and monetary success, Graves later professed a dislike for the books and their popularity. He claimed that they were written only from financial need on a strict deadline. Nonetheless, they are today regarded as pioneering masterpieces in the realm of historical fiction.