Morley Roberts

Biography

Morley Charles Roberts was born on December 29th, 1857 to Catherine, née Pullen and William Henry Roberts, superintending inspector of income tax. He attended Bedford Free Grammar School and Owens College before adventuring to Australia, where he gained experience working at sheep stations, and later to South Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. He would freely adapt these journeys into many of his writings, which range from novels to plays to semi-scientific essays. In 1906, Roberts married Alice Bruce Hamlyn, née Slous, the widowed daughter of playwright Angiolo Robson Slous. He was an avid outdoorsman, sailor, mountaineer, and adventurer for most of his life. He died of haemopericardium rupture at his home in London on June 8th, 1942 and was cremated at Golders Green.

Even the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography indicates that “[c]ritics agree that [Roberts] wrote far too much and too quickly, his popularity with the average reader being acquired at the cost of quality” (Coustillas). His fiery temperament and exotic escapades are undoubtedly manifested in his short fiction, not least of all in “The Experience of Mrs. Patterson-Grundy.” There, an unfulfilled upper-middle-class English lady attends a dull, moralizing play and suddenly encounters a suave baronet, who, in coordination with a secret agent of the British government, offers her protection from the amorous machinations of an unscrupulous Russian prince.