Northwest Passage (novel) - Impact

Impact

Northwest Passage was first published in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post, in one of the last decisions made by George Horace Lorimer before his retirement as editor of the Post, with Book 1 running in 1936 and Book 2 in 1937. The story became a national sensation and was the second best-selling novel in the U.S. in 1937, behind only Gone with the Wind, and was also the fifth best-selling novel in 1938.

Roberts wrote the novel in close collaboration with his neighbor Booth Tarkington, and dedicated the novel to him. In his autobiography, Roberts says that Tarkington did significantly more editing and rewriting of this book than he had ever done on any of Roberts' prior books, even Rabble in Arms, which had been Roberts' first real success. As a result, Roberts became discouraged during the writing process. When he worked up the courage to ask Tarkington whether his writing had become so much worse that the book needed so much more substantial editing, Tarkington told him that the opposite was true—the book was so much better than its predecessors that Tarkington thought it could become a smash hit with such editing. Roberts offered Tarkington co-author credit, but Tarkington refused it.

Roberts was hampered in writing Book 2 by the absence of two court-martial transcripts: the trial of Lieutenant Stevens (who was the leader of the troops that took the food away from Fort Wentworth in Book 1) and the trial of Rogers himself, which was a key element in Book 2. The transcripts had been lost for over one hundred years, and several historians had claimed that the transcripts had been suppressed by Rogers' allies such as Amherst to cover up embarrassing details about Rogers. Roberts, however, believed that the transcripts had probably been destroyed by Rogers' enemies Gage and Johnson and that copies still might exist at the Colonial Office in England. To that end, he hired a full-time English researcher to hunt for the transcripts.

After an extended search, when the novel was almost complete, copies of both transcripts were located, and Roberts' theory that they would be helpful, not harmful, to Rogers' reputation proved to be correct. The transcripts were published as part of a special two-volume first edition of Northwest Passage. However, Roberts fell behind in writing the book as a result of the inability to find the transcripts, and he had to finish the last part of the story (beginning with the journey from Michilimackinac) while on holiday in Italy, without the help of Tarkington. Another friend of Roberts', Major A. Hamilton Gibbs, author of the number one bestseller of 1925, Soundings, performed an editing function similar to Tarkington for the last section. Some critics of the time found the transition in prose style to be jarring.