Under the Tree

Elizabeth Madox Roberts was a Kentucky novelist and poet, primarily known for her novels and stories set in central Kentucky's Washington County, including The Time of Man (1926), "My Heart and My Flesh," The Great Meadow (1930) and A Buried Treasure (1931). Her distinct, rhythmic prose characterizes all of her writings. Robert Penn Warren called "The Time of Man" a classic; the eminent Southern critic and Southern Review editor Lewis P. Simpson counted her among the half dozen major Southern renascence writers. Three book-length studies of her work, three collections of critical articles, a major conference on her 100th birthday, a collection of her unpublished poems, and a flourishing Roberts Society that generates 20-odd papers at its annual April conferences have yet to revive wide interest in her work.