Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies (born Aug. 28, 1913, Thamesville, Ont., Can.—died Dec. 2, 1995, Orangeville, Ont.) was a novelist and playwright whose works offer penetrating observations on Canadian provincialism and prudery.

Educated in England at the University of Oxford, Davies had training in acting, directing, and stage management as a member of the Old Vic Repertory Company. He edited the Peterborough Examiner (1942–63), a newspaper owned by his family, and taught English at the University of Toronto (1960–81; emeritus thereafter).

Davies’ early reputation was based on the plays Eros at Breakfast (1949) and At My Heart’s Core (1950), which are satires on Canadian standards and values. He also published collections of humorous essays, such as The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947); The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949), in which an irascible old bachelor’s opinions highlight the problems of sustaining culture in Canada; and Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack (1967). Davies’ three trilogies of novels secured his reputation as Canada’s foremost man of letters. Known as a traditional storyteller, he was a master of imaginative writing and wicked wit. The Salterton trilogy consists of Tempest-Tost (1951), Leaven of Malice (1954), and A Mixture of Frailties (1958), all of which are comedies of manners set in a provincial Canadian university town. Even better known are the novels of the Deptford trilogy, consisting of Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975). These books examine the intersecting lives of three men from the small Canadian town of Deptford and interweave Davies’ moral concerns with bits of arcane lore and his enduring interest in Jungian psychotherapy. The Cornish trilogy consists of The Rebel Angels (1981), What’s Bred in the Bone (1985), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988); these novels satirize the art world, grand opera, and other aspects of high culture in Canada. Murther & Walking Spirits (1991) was written from the perspective of a dead man. The Cunning Man (1994), set in Toronto, spans the 20th century through the memoirs of a doctor; characters from Davies’ earlier works also appear in this novel. His later nonfiction included The Mirror of Nature (1983).

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Who Said It? Essential Writers, Artists, and Scientists

Davies was primarily concerned with the moral conflicts of characters in small Canadian towns. In the course of his narratives he wittily satirized bourgeois provincialism, explored the relation between mysticism and art, and affirmed the possibilities for self-knowledge through Jungian philosophy.