Charles G. D. Roberts - Life

Life

Roberts was born in Douglas, New Brunswick in 1860, the eldest child of Emma Wetmore Bliss and Rev. George Goodridge Roberts (an Anglican priest). His brother Theodore Goodridge Roberts and sister, Jane Elizabeth Gostwycke Roberts, would also become 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 proficient 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.

Roberts was principal of Chatham High School in Chatham, New Brunswick, from 1879 to 1881, and of York Street School in Fredericton from 1881 to 1883. In Chatham he met and befriended Edmund Collins, editor of the Chatham Star and the future biographer of Sir John A. Macdonald.

Read more about this topic:  Charles G. D. Roberts

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    In short, no association or alliance can be happy or stable without me. People can’t long tolerate a ruler, nor can a master his servant, a maid her mistress, a teacher his pupil, a friend his friend nor a wife her husband, a landlord his tenant, a soldier his comrade nor a party-goer his companion, unless they sometimes have illusions about each other, make use of flattery, and have the sense to turn a blind eye and sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly.
    Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)

    He can have this old life anytime he wants to. You hear that? Huh, you hear it? Come on. You’re welcome to it, Old Timer. Let me know you’re up there, come on. Love me, hate me, kill me,
    anything. Just let me know it.
    Donn Pierce, U.S. screenwriter, Frank R. Pierson, and Stuart Rosenberg. Luke Jackson (Paul Newman)

    The life of the wealthy is one long Sunday.
    Georg Büchner (1813–1837)