Charles G. D. Roberts

Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts (January 10, 1860 – November 26, 1943) was a Canadian poet and prose writer. He was one of the first Canadian authors to be internationally known. He published various works on Canadian exploration and natural history, verse, travel books, and fiction." He continued to be a well-known "man of letters" until his death.

Besides his own body of work, Roberts has also been called the "Father of Canadian Poetry" because he served as an inspiration and a source of assistance for other Canadian poets of his time.

Roberts, his cousin Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott are known as the Confederation Poets. He also inspired a whole nationalist school of late 19th-century poets.

Early life and education

Roberts was born in Douglas, New Brunswick, in 1860, the eldest child of Emma Wetmore Bliss and Rev. George Goodridge Roberts (an Anglican priest). Rev. Roberts was rector of Fredericton and canon of Christ Church Cathedral, New Brunswick. Charles's brother Theodore Goodridge Roberts and sister, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, also became authors.

Between the ages of 8 months and 14 years, Roberts was raised in the parish of Westcock, New Brunswick, near Sackville, by the Tantramar Marshes. He was homeschooled, mostly by his father, who was educated in Greek, Latin and French. He published his first writing, three articles in The Colonial Farmer, at 12 years of age.

After the family moved to Fredericton in 1873, Roberts attended Fredericton Collegiate School from 1874 to 1876, and then the University of New Brunswick (UNB), earning his B.A. in 1879 and M.A. in 1881. At the Collegiate School he came under the influence of headmaster George Robert Parkin, who gave him a love of classical literature and introduced him to the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne.