Occupation Writer Genre Historical fiction Spouse Anna Roberts (m. ?–1957) Period 1951-1958 Role Author | Alma mater Cornell University Name Kenneth Roberts Nationality American Notable works Northwest Passage Education Cornell University | |
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Died July 21, 1957, Kennebunk, Maine, United States Movies Northwest Passage, Frontier Rangers Books Northwest Passage, Lydia Bailey, Rabble in arms, Oliver Wiswell, The Lively Lady Similar People Booth Tarkington, Mederic Louis Elie Moreau d, King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, Talbot Jennings | ||
Kenneth Lewis Roberts (December 8, 1885 – July 21, 1957) was an American author of historical novels. Roberts worked first as a journalist, becoming nationally known for his work with the Saturday Evening Post from 1919 to 1928, and then as a popular novelist. Born in Kennebunk, Maine, Roberts specialized in Regionalist historical fiction. He often wrote about his native state and its terrain, also depicting other upper New England states and scenes. For example, the main characters of Arundel and Rabble in Arms are from Kennebunkport (then called Arundel), the main character of Northwest Passage is depicted as being from Kittery, Maine with friends in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the main character in Oliver Wiswell is from Milton, Massachusetts.
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Early life
Roberts graduated in 1908 from Cornell University, where he wrote the lyrics for two Cornell fight songs, including Fight for Cornell. He was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He was later awarded honorary doctorates from three New England colleges: Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Colby College in Maine and Middlebury College in Vermont.
Journalism
After graduation, Roberts spent eight years working as a newspaperman for the Boston Post. In 1917, he enlisted in the American army for World War I, but he ended up as a lieutenant in the intelligence section of the American Expeditionary Force Siberia in the Russian Civil War instead of at the front in Europe. The contacts that he made in that role enabled him to become a European correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post after the war, where he became the first American journalist to cover the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Adolf Hitler's first attempt to take power. Roberts described working for the Post's legendary editor George Horace Lorimer as follows: "I told him my ideas, which he instantly rejected or accepted ... The price to be paid for a story was never discussed, and Lorimer was always generous."
Historical fiction
Booth Tarkington, a neighbor of Roberts in Kennebunkport, Maine, convinced him that he would never find the time to succeed as a novelist while he worked as a journalist, and Tarkington agreed to help by editing Roberts' early novels. Although Roberts continued to sell a few essays to the Post, his next few years were largely dedicated to historical fiction. Ultimately, Tarkington edited all of his historical novels through Oliver Wiswell (1940), and Roberts said in his autobiography that he offered Tarkington co-writing credit on both Northwest Passage and Oliver Wiswell due to Tarkington's extensive revisions to each. Both of those novels as well as Rabble in Arms are dedicated to Tarkington, and Tarkington continued to assist Roberts until his death in 1946.
Roberts' historical fiction often focused on rehabilitating unpopular persons and causes in American history. A key character in Arundel and Rabble in Arms is American officer and eventual traitor Benedict Arnold, with Roberts focusing on Arnold's expedition to Quebec and the Battle of Quebec in the first novel and the Battle of Valcour Island, the Saratoga campaign and the Battles of Saratoga in the second. Meanwhile, the hero of Northwest Passage was Major Robert Rogers and his company Rogers' Rangers, although Rogers fought for the British during the American Revolutionary War. Oliver Wiswell focuses on a Loyalist officer during the American Revolution and covers the entire war, from famous events such as the Siege of Boston, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the New York and New Jersey campaign through the Battle of Fort Washington, and the Franco-American alliance, to less-remembered events such as the Convention Army, the exodus to Kentucky County, the Siege of Ninety-Six, and the resettlement of the United Empire Loyalists, as well as providing a later look at both a dissolute Rogers and a frustrated Arnold among the British.
As a result of his research into the Arnold Expedition, Roberts published the nonfiction work March to Quebec: Journals of the Members of Arnold's Expedition, a compilation of various journals and letters written by participants in the march. During Roberts' research into Major Rogers, his researcher uncovered transcripts of both of Major Rogers' courts-martial (once as the accuser and once as the accused), which had been thought lost for over a century, and these were published in the second volume of a special two-volume edition of Northwest Passage. He and his wife Anna translated into English the French writer Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry's account of his journey through America in the 1790s. His last published work was The Battle of Cowpens, a brief history of the Battle of Cowpens issued after his death in 1958.
One of Lorimer's last acts as editor of the Saturday Evening Post was to serialize Northwest Passage in 1936 and 1937. The success of that serialization led the book, when published, to become the second best-selling novel in 1937 and fifth best for the year 1938. Oliver Wiswell also spent two years in the top ten (1940 and 1941), and Lydia Bailey reached the top ten in 1947. One of Roberts' closest friends and neighbors, novelist A. Hamilton Gibbs, later stated that he believed that Roberts probably "wrote himself out" after Oliver Wiswell and certainly had done so after Lydia Bailey.
Key historical novels by Roberts and their topics include:
In 1957, two months before his death, Roberts received a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation "for his historical novels which have long contributed to the creation of greater interest in our early American history." He died, aged 71, in Kennebunkport.
Immigration
While a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post in the early 1920s, Roberts wrote many magazine articles and a book during the period immediately following World War I that urged strong legal restrictions on immigration from eastern and southern Europe, and from Mexico, and warning of the dangers of immigration from places other than northwestern Europe. He became a leading voice for stricter immigration laws, and testified before a congressional committee on the subject. He wrote:
“If America doesn’t keep out the queer alien mongrelized people of Southern and Eastern Europe, her crop of citizens will eventually be dwarfed and mongrelized in turn.”Florida land boom
Three of Roberts' first books were written at least in part to promote the Florida land boom of the 1920s. They were Sun Hunting (1922), Florida Loafing (1925), and Florida (1926). Many people lost a lot of money in the bust that followed. These books were usually omitted from the lists of 'other books by this author' published in the frontpages of his later works.
Dowsing
In the 1940s, Roberts became acquainted with Henry Gross, a retired Maine game warden and amateur water dowser. He and Gross began a long association to use Gross' claimed dowsing abilities to find deposits of water, petroleum, uranium, and diamonds, through a corporation named Water Unlimited, Inc. Roberts documented his experiences in three nonfiction books that were popular successes but that received much criticism from the scientific community. Roberts himself joked that he should have subtitled The Seventh Sense as "Or How to Lose Friends and Alienate People."