Margaret Roberts wrote from youth until old age, mostly during the later nineteenth century. She usually remained anonymous, though she did eventually give permission to the firm of
Tauchnitz to put her name on some of their editions of her novels. She produced at least thirty-eight books, including children's writing and non-fiction (from biography and history to grammar). Most of her novels have foreign settings and characters; most are historical, and carefully researched in the
British Museum, with every detail (of dress, for instance) carefully verified.
Milestones
1857 MR issued, anonymously, at both London and
New York, the earliest book identified as hers:
Summerleigh Manor; or, Brothers and Sisters, designed, as her preface mentions, for young readers.
By 17 March 1860 MR was in her twenties when she published, anonymously, her earliest success,
Mademoiselle Mori, which she had first written in Italian and then translated.
October 1906 MR's final book, appeared (as by 'the author of Madmoiselle Mori'): a study of
Saint Catherine of Siena and Her Times, which was commissioned from her by
Methuen when she was over seventy.
