Morley Roberts

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

Roberts was born in London, the son of a superintending inspector of income tax. He was educated at Bedford School, and Owens College, Manchester, England.

Near the end of 1876 Roberts took a steerage passage to Australia and landed at Melbourne in January 1877. The next three years were spent in obtaining colonial experience, mostly on sheep stations in New South Wales, and Roberts then returned to London. For a time he worked in the war office and other government departments, but again went on his travels and had varied occupations in the United States and Canada between 1884 and 1886. He later travelled in Oceania, Australia, South Africa, amongst other parts of the world.

Roberts used his experiences freely in his books, the first being The Western Avernus (1887). Roberts began his long series of novels and short stories in 1890. Of his novels, Rachel Marr (1903) was highly praised by William Henry Hudson, and The Private Life of Henry Maitland (1912), based on the life of George Gissing the novelist, was possibly his best known book. Roberts also wrote essays, biography, drama and verse, and did some competent work in biology. He married Alice, daughter of the playwright Angiolo Robson Slous, and died in London aged 84 on 8 June 1942.

He was only a few years in Australia, but there are many Australian references both in his novels and his short stories. 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 just published a scholarly edition of the Selected Stories of Morley Roberts (Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2015), edited with an introduction by Markus Neacey.

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