Morley Roberts

Morley Roberts
Morley Roberts in 1907
Born
Morley Roberts

(1857-12-29)29 December 1857
London, United Kingdom
Died8 June 1942(1942-06-08) (aged 84)
London, United Kingdom
Known forWriter

Morley Charles Roberts (29 December 1857 – 8 June 1942) was an English novelist and short story writer, best known for The Private Life of Henry Maitland.

Life and work

Roberts was born in London, the son of William Henry Roberts (1831–1908), a superintending inspector of income tax, and Catherine, née Pullen. He was educated at Bedford Grammar School, and Owens College, Manchester, England.

Roberts arrived in Melbourne in January 1877. He worked on sheep stations in New South Wales for three years and then returned to England, where he worked as a public servant. He later travelled around the world.

Roberts wrote several books about his life. The first was the travelogue The Western Avernus (1887), which took place in North America. While it was his most successful publication, his portrayals of Indigenous and Chinese people were marred by racism. His novel Rachel Marr (1903) was positively reviewed by William Henry Hudson. His novel Prey of the Strongest (1906), was the first accurate depiction of British Columbia mills, woods, and gambling halls. The Private Life of Henry Maitland (1912), based on the life of George Gissing the novelist, was one of his most important works. He married Alice, daughter of the playwright Angiolo Robson Selous, and died in London aged 84 on 8 June 1942.

Storm Jameson, who wrote a short biography of Roberts in 1961, considered Time and Thomas Waring to be his best novel. An exhaustive bibliography by Markus Neacey of his novels and other writings and writings about him can be found in the July 2012 number of English Literature in Transition. Roberts has featured in several articles in The Gissing Journal. Victorian Secrets have published a scholarly edition of the Selected Stories of Morley Roberts (Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2015), edited with an introduction by Markus Neacey.

Bibliography

Morley Roberts as cattleman. c. 1885

Novels:

Short story collections:

Poetry:

Plays:

Non-fiction:

References

  1. 1 2 "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38875. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ "Roberts, Morley". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. pp. 1495–1496.
  3. ↑ Selected Stories of Morley Roberts, ed. Markus Neacey, 2015, p. 17
  4. 1 2 Jameson, Storm (1961). Morley Roberts: The Last Eminent Victorian. London: The Unicorn Press.
  5. ↑ Serle, Percival (1949). "Roberts, Morley". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
  6. ↑ Mouat, Jeremy (Winter 2001–2002). "Morley Roberts in the Western Avernus". The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 93 (1): 27, 31.
  7. ↑ Lillard, Charles (Spring 1988). "Morley Roberts in British Columbia". BC Bookworld.
  8. ↑ "Nicola Barton's family pages". 8 July 2011. Archived from the original on 9 November 2004.
  9. ↑ Selous, Angiolo Robson (1866). True to the Core: A Story of the Armada. London: Tinsley Brothers.
  10. ↑ "Mr. Morley Roberts". The Guardian. London. 9 June 1942. p. 3. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019. Retrieved 7 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Neacey, Markus (2012). "A Bibliography of Morley Roberts's Writings". English Literature in Transition. 55 (3): 361–393.
  12. ↑ Neacey, Markus (October 2009). "Arthur C. Clarke Looking Backward 1967–1898 and Morley Roberts Anticipating: A Literary Oddity". The Gissing Journal. XLV: 24–38.
  13. ↑ Neacey, Markus (April 2012). "Morley Roberts' Literary Career in the 1880s and 1890s, Part One". The Gissing Journal. XLVIII: 1–29.
  14. ↑ Neacey, Markus (July 2012). "Morley Roberts' Literary Career in the 1880s and 1890s, Part Two". The Gissing Journal. XLVIII: 23–40.
  15. ↑ "Untitled". The Independent. Vol. 60, no. 2992–3004. 1906. p. 1043. Thus Morley Roberts's new story of The Idlers' in London society has more of what he calls "rotters" in it than any other book which has appeared this year. But he does not harrow the reader nor even the consciences of the "rotters" themselves.
  16. ↑ R. B. Russell (ed.). "Morley Roberts". A Guide to Supernatural Fiction. Archived from the original on 12 December 2007.
  17. ↑ Neacey, Markus (2015). Selected Stories of Morley Roberts. Brighton: Victorian Secrets.