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. 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:

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.

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). In his subsequent books which listed 'other books by this author', these three were not mentioned. Many people lost money in the bust that followed, and perhaps Roberts wanted to disassociate himself from his role in promoting the boom.

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."

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

[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.

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