Dates

• Existence: -1976

Biography

At the age of twenty-five Denys Kilham Roberts moved from practicing copyright law into a position as assistant to the General Secretary for the Society of Authors in England under G.H. Thring. After Thring was superannuated in 1930, Roberts took over the General Secretary position, a post he held for some thirty-six years. He also worked in the publishing industry, editing over twenty-five collections of poetry and prose. After thirty years as Secretary General of the Society, the publication of that group, The Author, contains an essay, "Thirty Years Hard" praising DKR's (as he was known in the office) good service. This sentiment is also reflected in a quote from a letter from Hugh Walpole to an unknown correspondent which is in the MsL collection at the University of Iowa: ". . . and I should like also to say that I am tremendously impressed by the improvement in 'The Authors.' Mr. Roberts work in it shows how truly disgraceful the old one was." His legal background stood him in good stead, as he lobbied on behalf of authors in many causes, such as the Musical Copyright Bill, the Law of Libel, Author's Taxes, and the Obscenity Law. He apparently possessed an intellect that could match the authors he represented and the legal acumen to see his way through complicated contracts, bills, and lawsuits. In 1936 he hired Elizabeth Barber to be his assistant and she stayed for the remainder of his tenure, and took over as General Secretary after Roberts retired. In Author By Profession, Volume II, she has this to say about Roberts:

Laughter was like strong drink to him, often indulged in when things looked particularly black. So it was to many of the other congenial, brilliant and difficult people I met during my time with the Society. In DKR's case however he would be quite prepared to sacrifice truth to wit and even malice - disconcerting at times if you had to sit silently by and watch some innocent swallowing some unlikely statement.

Shortly after my arrival, DKR was compiling a book of nonsense and surrealist verse and used in his introduction a passage from G.K. Chesterton that he liked to quote: "So long as we regard a tree as a thing naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot possibly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats to the astonishment of the park keeper."

His capacity to take off his hat to the astonishment of the park keeper endeared him to me and to a multitude of other friends, who nevertheless found him - as I did - maddening and almost impossible to work with when the black fit descended on him. I remember W.J. Turner, who had been involved, foolishly and innocently, in a publishing deal which was hard on some of his fellow authors, saying ruefully, "My dear Denys, just because you don't like the colour of someone's front door, you don't have to pull down every house in the street."

Combined with the surrealist side of his nature which turned truth inside out or ignored it altogether was a capacity for recognizing the true quality of a person or thing . . . It was an education to hear him assess a poem absolutely on its merits, when compiling one of his anthologies, so that many previously unknown poems took precedence over old and familiar favourites. It was the same with pictures. . . and to an extreme degree with wine.

These qualities, combined with the power to charm a bird off a tree or sway a committee made his many friends and, alas, many enemies too. I remember him once saying, "Why is it that so many authors seem pleased to talk to me and to be seen to be talking to me, but more pleased to say something absolutely beastly behind my back?" I believe it was due to a feeling that there was something phoney about his 'latin' exuberance and enthusiasm; but that when he had gone away and the warmth of his personality was not present, then one wondered whether he had been playing some sort of diabolical game for his own ends. In fact, he hardly ever had.

. . .Part of the power that DKR exerted was, ridiculous as it may sound, due to the story he put about that he could use the 'evil eye'. Every time that anyone died or was taken inexplicably ill after quarrelling with him, he took credit for it. It was a sinister side to his character that could not be underrated.

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