Kenneth L. Roberts – The Unofficial Site

When you hear of LIFE magazine, it’s likely you think of the magazine who – in its heyday – was known for its cumbersome size, its photojournalism, and its iconic logo (as illustrated below).

The Life magazine of Kenneth Roberts’ day, however, is not the same magazine. There were, in fact, two iterations of Life.

The Life Magazine of the early 20th century was launched in New York City on January 4, 1883 by former contributors to the Harvard Lampoon.¹ The first editors – John Ames Mitchell, Andrew Miller, and Edward S. Martin – sought to

“beat out bot the local competition in the ‘comic’ market (Puck and Judge) and the big gun across the Atlantic, London’s Punch.”²

This first iteration of Life ran until 1936, when it was then purchased by Henry Luce of Time, Inc. The first issue of the second iteration of Life ran on November 23, 1936.³

As I stated in my previous post, Kenneth Roberts set out to pursue his passion for writing by writing as much as he can, sending his work first to Life, and what was not selected by Life he sent to Puck and Judge. For nearly four years, Roberts established himself as a regular contributor to the nation’s most popular satire and humor magazines – even holding editorial positions at Life (1915-1918) and Puck (1916-1917) before moving to SEP in 1919.⁴

To my knowledge, there has been no bibliography made of Roberts’ work at Life – if anything, only passing references are made to this period of Roberts’ work. I am uncertain why this is the case – perhaps it’s due to sheer number of pieces he published. Bales notes:

In 1917, he wrote some 550 sketches, playlets, short essays, and light verse, of which over 300 were published.⁵

No doubt the nation began recognizing Roberts as a writer during his time at SEP – indeed, it was his move there that set him on the course to being a well-known novelist. However, I believe that had Roberts not set his mind to writing in 1916 and publishing in Life, Puck, and Judge, we may not have the Roberts we know today. As such, I believe a bibliography of Roberts’ formative writing years (1916-1919) provides important context for his later years as a SEP correspondent and eventual novelist.

Thanks to modern technology, we have free access to scanned images of the first iteration of Life Magazine. Granted, skimming through these copies is akin to scanning copies in a microfiche machine. Nevertheless, some of Roberts’ hardest to find works are available at our fingertips. To save you from seemingly endless scrolling, I provide below a bibliography of Roberts’ Life works:

This bibliography is a work-in-progress (as I note at the end of the bibliography); however, it provides a substantive outline of Roberts’ early contributions. Keep your eyes open for a bibliography for Roberts’ works in Judge and one for his works in Puck.

1. Banta, M. “From ‘Harry Jim’ to ‘St. James’ in Life Magazine (1883-1916): Twitting the Author; Prompting the Public.” The Henry James Review 14 (1993): 237. ↩︎
2. Banta, 237. ↩︎
3. History.com Editors. “First issue of “Life” is published” (Nov. 2009). Accessed November 25, 2024. ↩︎
4. Bales, J. Kenneth Roberts: The Man and His Works (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1989), xxi. ↩︎
5. Bales, 13. ↩︎