Kenneth Roberts

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This article is about the U.S. historical novelist. For the U.S. Representative from Alabama, see Kenneth A. Roberts.

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 heroes of Arundel and Rabble in Arms are from Kennebunk (then called Arundel), while Langdon Towne, the chief character of Roberts's Northwest Passage, is depicted as being from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Roberts graduated from Cornell University in 1908, where he wrote the lyrics for two Cornell fight songs. He was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He was later awarded honorary doctorates from three New England universities: Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Colby College in Maine and Middlebury College in Vermont.[1]

Contents

[edit] 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 gain 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."[2]

[edit] Historical fiction

Roberts' Kennebunkport neighbor Booth Tarkington convinced him that he would never find the time to succeed as a novelist as long as 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, 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 plus Rabble in Arms are dedicated to Tarkington.

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 Benedict Arnold, with Roberts focusing on the Arnold Expedition 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, and Oliver Wiswell focuses on a Loyalist officer during the American Revolution.

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 a book by a French writer about his journey through America in the 1790s. In addition, his last published work was a brief history of the Battle of Cowpens, entitled 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 America for the year 1937 and fifth for the year 1938. Oliver Wiswell also spent two years in the top 10 (1940 and 1941), and Lydia Bailey reached the top 10 in 1947.

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."[3]

[edit] Controversies

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. In Roberts' subsequent books with listings of 'other books by this author', these three were usually not mentioned.

Late in his career, 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' supposed 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."[4]

[edit] Bibliography

  • Europe's Morning After (1921) -- collection of Saturday Evening Post essays
  • Why Europe Leaves Home (1922) -- collection of Saturday Evening Post essays
  • Sun Hunting: Adventures and Observations among the Native and Migratory Tribes of Florida (1922) -- humorous essays, Florida promotion
  • Black Magic (1924) -- collection of Saturday Evening Post essays
  • Concentrated New England: A Sketch of Calvin Coolidge (1924) -- informal biography
  • Florida Loafing (1925) -- humorous essays, Florida promotion
  • Florida (1926) -- Florida promotion
  • Arundel (1929) -- historical novel
  • The Lively Lady (1931) -- historical novel -- (Link of interest: Dartmoor Prison)
  • Rabble in Arms (1933) -- historical novel
  • Captain Caution (1934) -- historical novel
  • For Authors Only, and Other Gloomy Essays (1935) -- humorous essays
  • It Must Be Your Tonsils (1936) -- humorous essays
  • Northwest Passage (1937) -- historical novel
  • March to Quebec (1938) -- historic compelation
  • Trending into Maine (1938) -- travelogue
  • Oliver Wiswell (1940) -- historical novel
  • The Kenneth Roberts Reader (1945) -- compilation
  • Lydia Bailey (1947) -- historical novel
  • Moreau de St.-Mery's American Journey 1793-1798 (1947) (English translation, with Anna M. Roberts) -- history
  • I Wanted to Write (1949) -- autobiography
  • Henry Gross and his Dowsing Rod (1951) -- dowsing
  • The Seventh Sense (1953) -- dowsing
  • Boon Island (1955) -- historical novel
  • Water Unlimited (1957) -- dowsing
  • The Battle of Cowpens (1958) -- historic essay

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Brennan, Elizabeth and Clarage, Elizabeth. Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. p. 571 (1999).
  2. ^ Cohn, January Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post. University of Pittsburgh Press (1990), p. 282.
  3. ^ Brennan, Elizabeth and Clarage, Elizabeth. Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners. p. 571 (1999).
  4. ^ Jack Bales, "At the nadir of 'discouragement': The Story of Dartmouth's Kenneth Roberts Collection", Dartmouth College Library Bulletin (April 1990).

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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