Kenneth Lewis Roberts

Kenneth Lewis Roberts (1885-1957), American novelist, born in Kennebunk, Maine. Following Roberts’s graduation in 1908 from Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, he worked for the Boston Post until 1917 and also contributed his writing to Life and Puck magazines. After World War I (1914-1918), in which he became a captain in the intelligence service, he served as a traveling correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post until 1937. In 1928 he began writing his long series of novels concerning early American history, including Arundel (1930), Rabble in Arms (1933), Northwest Passage (1937), Oliver Wiswell (1940), Lydia Bailey (1947), and Boon Island (1955), all showing painstaking research. Of his other notable works, For Authors Only (1935) is a book of essays, and Trending into Maine (1938) is a eulogy of his native state. Roberts received a special citation Pulitzer Prize in 1957.