Morley Roberts

Morley Roberts (December 29, 1857 - June 8, 1942) was an English novelist and short-story writer best known for Henry Maitland's Private Life. Roberts was born in London in the family of an income tax inspector. He was educated at Bedford School and Owens College, Manchester, England. Toward the end of 1876, Roberts took the steering passage to Australia and landed in Melbourne in January 1877. The next three years were spent on obtaining colonial experience, mainly at sheep stations in New South Wales, and then Roberts returned to London. For some time he worked in the military and other government departments, but again went on a trip and was engaged in various professions in the United States and Canada from 1884 to 1886. He later traveled to Oceania, Australia, South Africa, among other parts of the world. Roberts freely used his experience in his books, the first of which was Western Avernus (1887), his most successful book. Roberts began his long series of novels and short stories in 1890. Of his novels, Rachel Marr (1903) was praised by William Henry Hudson and The Private Life of Henry Maitland (1912), based on the life of the novelist George Gissing was one of his most important works. Roberts also wrote essays, biographies, drama, and poems, and did some competent work in the field of biology. He married Alice, daughter of playwright Anjolo Robson Sloes, and died in London at the age of 84 on June 8, 1942. He was only a few years in Australia, but in his novels and stories, there are many references to Australians. A comprehensive bibliography of Marcus Nicky about his novels and other works and publications about him can be found in the July 2012 issue of English Literature in Transition. Roberts has been featured in several articles in the Gissing Journal. Victorian Secrets was published by the scientific edition of Morley Roberts' Selected Stories (Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2015), edited by an introduction by Marcus Nisi.