Kenneth Roberts

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Kenneth Lewis Roberts (December 8, 1885 – July 21, 1957) was an American author of historical novels. After serving as an Army lieutenant during the American Siberian campaign in the Russian Civil War in 1919, Roberts worked first as a journalist, 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, Langdon Towne, the chief character of Roberts's Northwest Passage, is depicted as being from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. At a key point in the novel, Towne and his companions, fighting for their lives, trudge through what is now the Northeast Kingdom region of Vermont.

Key novels of Roberts's work include:

• Northwest Passage - French and Indian War
• Arundel
• The Lively Lady
• Rabble in Arms - American Revolution; sequel to Arundel
• Captain Caution
• Oliver Wiswell - The American Revolution from a loyalist's perspective
• Boon Island
• Lydia Bailey

Roberts described his life in detail in his autobiography, I Wanted to Write.

In 1957 he 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."

Kenneth L. Roberts' first three books were written to promote the Florida land boom of the 1920s. They were Sun Hunting (1922), Florida Loafing (1925), and Florida (1926). One curious thing was that in his subsequent books where he had a page listing 'other books by this author', these three were not mentioned. A lot of people lost money in the bust that followed the boom and perhaps Roberts wanted to disassociate himself from this part of his writing career.

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.

[edit] Dowsing

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. Roberts documented his experiences in three nonfiction books that were popular successes, but received much criticism from the scientific community.

• Henry Gross and his Dowsing Rod (1951) Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• The Seventh Sense (1953) Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• Water Unlimited (1957) Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

[edit] See also

• "Kenneth Roberts," Dictionary of Literary Biography 9:313-318. (1981).
• Janet Harris, A Century of American History in Fiction: Kenneth Roberts' Novels, 1976.
• "'At the nadir of discouragement': The Story of Dartmouth's Kenneth Roberts Collection," by Jack Bales, Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, n.s., 30 (April 1990), pp. 45-53.
• Jack Bales, Kenneth Roberts: The Man and His Works, 1989.
• Jack Bales, Kenneth Roberts, 1993.