Roberts's first book, Orion and Other Poems (1880), was a vanity book for which he had to "pay an advance of $300, most of which he borrowed from George E. Fenety, the Queen's Printer for New Brunswick, soon to become his father-in-law."
In 1958, the critic Desmond Pacey wrote that "when we remind ourselves that it was published when the poet was twenty .. we realize that it is a remarkable performance [REF].