George Edwards Theodore Goodridge Roberts (July 7, 1877 – February 24, 1953) was a Canadian novelist and poet. He was the author of thirty-four novels and over one hundred published stories and poems.
He was the brother of poet Charles G. D. Roberts, and the father of painter Goodridge Roberts.
Life
Roberts was born in Fredericton, to Emma Wetmore Bliss and Anglican Rev. George Goodridge Roberts. The poet Charles G. D. Roberts, and the writers William Carman Roberts and Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, were his siblings.
He published his first poem in 1889, when he was eleven, in the New York Independent (where his cousin Bliss Carman was working), and his first prose piece (a comparison of the Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of Gettysburg) in the Century two years later.
Roberts attended Fredericton Collegiate School, though (since school records were lost in a fire) the exact years are unknown. He later went to University of New Brunswick (UNB), but left without graduating. He published poetry in UNB's University Magazine.
In 1897, he moved to New York City, living with his brothers Charles and William and working at The Independent. In 1898 the magazine sent him to Cuba, as a special correspondent, to cover the Spanish–American War. While on the island he contracted malaria—he was sent back to New York and consulted specialists, who sent him back to Fredericton "to die."
An unnamed surgeon saved Roberts's life, and he was nursed back to heath by Frances Seymour Allen (whom he would subsequently marry). The next year he travelled to Newfoundland, where he helped to found and edit The Newfoundland Magazine. He published his first book of poetry Northand Lyrics, an anthology edited by Charles G.D. Roberts and featuring his three siblings in 1899, and his first novel, The House of Isstens, in 1900.
