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Kenneth Roberts 1885-1957
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Roberts, who was born in Kennebunk's Storer Mansion and in 1938 built a home called Rocky Pastures in Kennebunkport, was a correspondent for the "Saturday Evening Post" until he quit to write his many historical novels and his books of essays and other non-fiction, most set in New England: Why Europe Leaves Home (1922) The Collector's Whatnot (1923; written by Roberts and Booth Tarkington using nom de plumes of Cornelius O. Van Loot, Milton Kilgallen, and Murgatroyd Elphinstone) Antiquamania (1928; written by Roberts and illus. by Booth Tarkington Arundel: A Chronicle of the Province of Maine and of the Secret Expedition Against Quebec (1930; about Arnold's expedition), also published as Arundel, Being the Recollections of Steven Nason of Arundel, in the Province of Maine, Attached to the Secret Expedition Led by Colonel Benedict Arnold Against Quebec Lively Lady (1931; War of 1812; features son of the hero of Arundel) Rabble in Arms (1933) Captain Caution: A Chronicle of Arundel (1934) For Authors Only, and Other Gloomy Essays (1945) Northwest Passage (1936) March to Quebec (1938; journals of the members of Arnold's expeditions) Trending into Maine (1938/1944; essays on Maine legends, history, seafaring, food) Oliver Wiswell (1940), The Kenneth Roberts Reader (1945; excerpts and essays) Lydia Bailey (1947) Don't Say That About Maine! (1948) I Wanted to Write (1949) Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod (1951; Maine game warden whose gift of water dousing led to fresh water in Bermuda) The Seventh Sense (1953) Boon Island (1955; about actual shipwreck in early Maine history) Water Unlimited (1957) The Battle of Cowpens: The Great Morale Builder (1957; his last novel)
Edgar Allen Beem, in an Aug. 1997 issue of Downeast magazine about Roberts' symbolic novel, Boon Island, calls Roberts "an enormously popular novelist..., an ultra-conservative Republican who inveighed in print against the New Deal and against America's liberal immigration policy." It is said that he so hated Franklin Roosevelt that he glued Roosevelt dimes to the clamshells he used as ashtrays, the better to grind ashes into FDR's face! His friend and summer neighbor, Booth Tarkington apparently shared his political views.
Incidentally, Roberts' niece, Marjorie Mosser, collected the recipes published in her book, Good Maine Food (1947).
- Kenneth Roberts Collection at Dartmouth
'At
the Nadir of my Discouragement': The Story of Dartmouth's Kenneth Roberts
Collection
Kenneth Roberts - filmography
- Fury River (1961) (novel Northwest Passage)
- Mission of Danger (1959) (novel Northwest Passage)
- Frontier Rangers (1959) (novel)
- Lydia Bailey (1952) (novel)
- Captain Caution (1940) (novel)
- Northwest Passage (1940) (novel Northwest Passage, Book I, 'Rogers' Rangers')
- Shell Game, The (1918) (story Good Will and Almond Shells) (as Kenneth L. Roberts)
