Kenneth Roberts – The Unofficial Site

To continue my excitement from last night, in addition to finding the book on dowsing in which the author spent an entire chapter on Kenneth Roberts and Henry Gross, I also came across a scholarly article written by Sylvia Whitman titled “The West of a Down Easterner: Kenneth Roberts and The Saturday Evening Post, 1924-1928” from The Journal of the West.  This find has opened up yet another vein of study of Kenneth Roberts – particularly Kenneth Roberts the man.  Though I’ll be saving my critique of Ms. Whitman’s article for a future post, I want to point out how well-written and well-researched her article is; the footnotes alone will give me plenty of material to write on in future posts.

The point of this post is to point out the fact that there is scholarly work done on Kenneth Roberts, and it’s there for the picking.  I don’t know how easy it will be to access some of these works (some works are dissertations and/or theses), but I am going to do my best to get my hands on these works!

In regards to Ms. Whitman, her article I mentioned above appeared in 1992.  She has a rather extensive CV, and has recently written a new novel.  What I find interesting about her in regards to this website is that, according to the short bio at the end of  “The West of a Down Easterner,” 1) her grandfather was Robert Choate – a good friend of Roberts, and 2) Ms. Whitman wrote her Master’s thesis on Kenneth Roberts and the Saturday Evening Post.   Most Kenneth Roberts’ fans (including myself) are mostly familiar with his historical-fiction novels; Ms. Whitma’s works, and those of others, help to provide a more complete picture of Kenneth Roberts the man.  I truly look forward to reading more from Ms. Whitman.

In the meantime, I want to provide a short bibliography of scholarly work done on Roberts – works of Ms. Whitman herself and those she references in her article (in no particular order or style; this is rather informal).  I do plan on doing a more formal bibliography soon.

Whitman, S. S. (1992). The west of a down easterner: Kenneth Roberts and The Saturday Evening Post, 1924-1928. Journal Of The West, 31(1), 88-97.

Hoffman, G. F. (1979). Ethnic prejudice and racial ideology in the immigration articles of kenneth L. roberts. Michigan State University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , 95-95 p. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/302937060?accountid=12085. (302937060).

Jeffery, Benjamin Miles, “The Saturday Evening Post Short Story in the Nineteen-Twenties,” diss., University of Texas, 1966 (footnote 8 in Ms. Whitman’s article).

Kitch, John Ira, “From History to Fiction: Kenneth Roberts As an Historical Novelist,” diss., University of Illinois, Urbana, 1965 (footnote 12 in Ms. Whitman’s article).

Cary, Richard, “Roberts and Lorimer: The First Decade,” Colby Library Quarterly, 6(Sept. 1962).

Filed under: K.R. in Scholarly Work | Tagged: Robert Choate, Saturday Evening Post, Sylvia Whitman |