Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts KCMG FRSC (January 10, 1860 – November 26, 1943) was a Canadian poet and prose writer.

[1][4] Roberts, his cousin Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott are known as the Confederation Poets.

Between the ages of 8 months and 14 years, Roberts was raised in the parish of Westcock, New Brunswick, near Sackville, by the Tantramar Marshes.

[10] At the Collegiate School he came under the influence of headmaster George Robert Parkin, who gave him a love of classical literature[9] and introduced him to the poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne.

[13] From 1883 to 1884, Roberts was in Toronto, Ontario, working as the editor of Goldwin Smith's short-lived literary magazine, The Week.

During the following six years, Roberts wrote articles on a variety of subjects, mentored not-yet-recognized poets such as Annie Campbell Huestis, and lectured in a number of cities in Canada and the United States.

He published about thirty poems in The Independent (edited by Bliss Carman) and other American periodicals, as well as stories for young readers in The Youth's Companion.

[11] In a short period of time he had published his first novel, The Forge in the Forest, as well as a fourth collection of poetry, The Book of the Native.

[10] In New York, Roberts wrote prose in many genres, but had most success with animal stories, drawing upon his early experience in the wilds of the Maritimes.

[2] He also wrote descriptive text for guide books, such as Picturesque Canada and The Land of Evangeline and Gateways Thither for Nova Scotia's Dominion Atlantic Railway.

[16] Roberts became involved in a literary debate known as the nature fakers controversy after John Burroughs denounced his popular animal stories, and those of other writers, in a 1903 article for Atlantic Monthly.

It was a vanity book; he paid an advance of $300 to have it published, borrowing money from George E. Fenety, the Queen's Printer for New Brunswick, and his father-in-law-to-be.

[19] Editor Ross Kilpatrick called the poems "imitative, naively romantic, defective in diction", but also "facile, clever, and occasionally distinctly beautiful".

The sonnet sequence of Songs of the Common Day drew attention from critics; some colourfully described landscapes in Tantramar (lines such as "How sombre slope these acres to the sea' ('The Furrow"), 'These marshes pale and meadows by the sea' ('The Salt Flats'), and 'My fields of Tantramar in summer-time' ('The Pea-Fields')).

Some of the poems demonstrated Roberts' skill at colourful depictions of nature through Romantic verse;[11] however, the book also included examples of a shift toward a more mystical style.

"New Poems, a slim volume published in 1919, shows the drop in both the quantity and quality of Roberts' poetry during his European years.

"[11] Roberts's "return to Canada in 1925 led to a renewed production of verse with The Vagrant of Time (1927) and The Iceberg and Other Poems (1934).

It leads us back to the old kinship of earth, without asking us to relinquish by way of toll any part of the wisdom of the ages, any fine essential of the 'large result of time.'

[9] For his contributions to Canadian literature, Roberts was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's first Lorne Pierce Medal in 1926.

[9] On June 3, 1935, Roberts was one of three Canadians on King George V's honour list to receive a knighthood (Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St.

[11] Roberts was honoured by a sculpture erected in 1947 on the UNB campus, portraying him with Bliss Carman and fellow poet Francis Joseph Sherman.

[9][25] His alma mater, the University of New Brunswick, offers a "Charles G.D. Roberts Memorial Prize" for best short story by an undergraduate.

Roberts' poem "The Maple" was set to music by composer Garrett Krause, and performed in 2018 as part of the Luminous Voices concert in Calgary.