Scope and Content Note
The papers of Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881-1941) span the years 1921-1941, the period during which the Kentucky-born poet and author penned the bulk of her work. Roberts importance to modern American literature lay in her introspective and poetic style and her influence as a regional writer in southern renaissance literature. The collection contains drafts, notes, outlines, page proofs, and miscellaneous items that shed light on her contribution to the agrarian literary revival of the 1920s and 1930s. The papers are organized into six series: Novels , Collections of Short Stories , Short Stories , Poetry , Miscellaneous Writings , and Miscellany.
The Novels series contains multiple drafts of Roberts’s 1926 book Time of Man, including the printer’s copy, that includes the author’s analysis of its structure and plot and her statement of the circumstances under which it was written. Documentation for Roberts’s other books is similar in nature. The series also includes hand-drawn illustrations and research notes on early Kentucky history as well as drafts, notes, and outlines for an unpublished book on the Louisville flood of 1937.
Except for In the Great Steep’s Garden (1915), all of Roberts’s published works are represented in the collection, and because it includes early notes and drafts, variant readings, research material, and statements of the author’s purpose, the collection testifies to the conception and development of her entire body of work. The papers further allow for examination into Roberts’s literary form and style through the structural analysis and critical study of her published texts. Other items of particular interest include the reminiscences of Roberts’s mother describing life in Kentucky before and during the Civil War as recounted in “Life in the Country: Reminiscences,” in the Short Stories series.