Morley Roberts

Morley Roberts (1857–1942) was an English novelist, essayist and short story writer whose career ran more than fifty years and produced upwards of thirty novels along with many volumes of short stories. He met George Gissing after winning a scholarship to Owens College in Manchester, and the friendship shaped both men: it was Gissing who suggested he write up his years of tramping and labouring in North America, which became The Western Avernus (1887) and made his name. Roberts wrote from hard first-hand experience of herding, labouring camps and merchant ships. He is best known today for The Private Life of Henry Maitland (1912), a barely disguised life of Gissing.