Elizabeth Madox Roberts: An Introduction

SCHOLARSHIP Elizabeth Madox Roberts: An Introduction John Langan This year marks the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the birth of Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881-1941), quite possibly the most neglected major American writer of the twentieth century. A resident of Springfield, Kentucky, for much of her life, Roberts achieved international fame with her first novel, The Time ofMan, published in 1926 to widespread acclaim from critics including Sherwood Anderson and Ford Madox Ford. She followed it with My Heart and My Flesh (1927) and The Great Meadow (1930), which cemented her reputation as among the most gifted of novelists. Critics recognized in her work a combination of Modernist experimentation with regionalism, which, to borrow Allen Tate's definition of the word, is to say the sense of a geographical area held together by its common culture and history. Roberts blended stylistic subtlety with a deep awareness of her Kentucky home to produce several fictional masterpieces. The 1930s, however, saw a falling-off of Roberts's reputation, and by the time of her death in 1941, her novels had largely vanished from public and scholarly view. There have been several attempts at reviving her work. The first, and in some ways still most productive, took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, producing books and articles on Roberts by critics including Harry Campbell and Ruel Foster, Earl Rovitt, Frederick McDowell, and Robert Perm Warren. The second "Roberts Revival" occurred in the early 1980s and was spearheaded by Professor William Slavick of the University of Southern Maine, who organized both the Roberts Centenary Conference in 1981 and a special Roberts issue of The Southern Review in 1984. The most recent revival of Elizabeth Madox Roberts's work began in 1999 with the formation of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society by scholars from the State University of New York at New Paltz, the City University of New York Graduate Center, and Saint Catharine College near Springfield, Kentucky. Having as its goals the restoration of Roberts's works to print and their teaching and study, the Society has sponsored a spring conference at Saint Catharine College each year since its inception. The steady growth in participants and attendees at each conference has been encouraging. The 19 Society now boasts members from schools ranging from Maryland to Massachusetts to North Carolina to Oklahoma. The papers graciously printed in this issue of Appalachian Heritage were first presented at the Third Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference, held from April 22-23, 2001, and are evidence of the range and quality of work being done by the latest generation of Roberts scholars. The Society wishes to thank Jim Gage, editor ofAppalachian Heritage, for his generous offer to include essays from this year's Roberts Conference in the journal. Believing that one of the nobler goals of literary scholarship is the recognition and study of unjustly neglected writers, the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society welcomes membership inquiries. Those interested may contact the Society's President, John Langan, through email , langanj@newpaltz.edu, or via regular mail, 583 Springtown Road, New Paltz, NY 12561. 20 ...