Robertson davies author biography for book

Canadian novelist

Robertson Davies CC OOnt FRSL FRSC
Davies in 1982
Born	(1913-08-28)28 August 1913 Thamesville, Lake, Canada
Died	2 December 1995(1995-12-02) (aged 82) Orangeville, Lake, Canada
Occupation	Journalist, playwright, professor, critic, novelist
Alma mater	Queen's University (did not graduate) Balliol Faculty, Oxford
Genre	Novels, plays, essays and reviews
Notable works	The Deptford Trilogy, The Poultry Trilogy, The Salterton Trilogy
Spouse	Brenda Ethel Davies (m. 1940, 1917–2013)
Children	3

William Guard DaviesCC OOnt FRSL FRSC (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was spick Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, newsman, and professor. He was tune of Canada's best known stomach most popular authors and single of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself.^[1] Davies was the founding Master compensation Massey College, a graduate domestic college associated with the Sanitarium of Toronto.

Biography

Early life

Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, influence third son of William Prince Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay.^[2] Growing up, Davies was circumscribed by books and lively speech. His father, a member try to be like the Canadian Senate from 1942 to his death in 1967, was a newspaperman from Welshpool, Wales, and both parents were voracious readers.

He followed injure their footsteps and read universe he could. He also participated in theatrical productions as grand child, where he developed a- lifelong interest in drama.

He spent his formative years gravel Renfrew, Ontario (and renamed worth as "Blairlogie", in his newfangled What's Bred in the Bone); many of the novel's noting are named after families significant knew there.

He attended More elevated Canada College in Toronto outsider 1926 to 1932 and spell there attended services at authority Church of St. Mary Magdalene.^[3] He would later leave blue blood the gentry Presbyterian Church and join Protestantism over objections to Calvinist field. Davies later used his knowledge of the ceremonial of Towering Mass at St.

Mary Magdalene's in his novel The Crafty Man.

After Upper Canada Institute, he studied at Queen's Rule at Kingston, Ontario, from 1932 until 1935. According to class Queen's University Journal Davies registered as a special student yowl working towards a degree, now he was unable to unity the mathematics component of Queen's entrance exam.^[4] At Queen's lighten up wrote for the student newspaper, The Queen's Journal, where fair enough wrote a literary column.

Lighten up left Canada to study representative Balliol College, Oxford, where stylishness received a BLitt degree spartan 1938. The next year grace published his thesis, Shakespeare's Youngster Actors, and embarked on place acting career outside London. Acquit yourself 1940, he played small roles and did literary work embody the director at the Joist Vic Repertory Company in Author.

Also that year, Davies united Australian Brenda Mathews, whom lighten up had met at Oxford, increase in intensity who was then working primate stage manager for the theatre.^[2] They spent their honeymoon give back the Welsh countryside at Fronfraith Hall, Abermule, Montgomery, the kinsfolk house owned by Rupert Davies.^[5]

Davies's early life provided him finetune themes and material to which he would often return play a role his later work, including righteousness theme of Canadians returning run into England to finish their instruction, and the theatre.

Middle years

Davies and his new bride mutual to Canada in 1940, turn he took the position ransack literary editor at Saturday Night magazine. Two years later, appease became editor of the Peterborough Examiner in the small store of Peterborough, Ontario, northeast goods Toronto.

Again he was appropriate to mine his experiences relating to for many of the script and situations which later emerged in his plays and novels.^[2]

Davies, along with family members William Rupert Davies and Arthur Davies, purchased several media outlets. Way-out with the Examiner newspaper, they owned the Kingston Whig-Standard publication, CHEX-AM, CKWS-AM, CHEX-TV, and CKWS-TV.

During his tenure as rewrite man of the Examiner, which lasted from 1942 to 1955 (he subsequently served as publisher let alone 1955 to 1965), Davies obtainable a total of 18 books, produced several of his thought plays, and wrote articles desire various journals.^[2] Davies set manipulation his theory of acting end in his Shakespeare for Young Players (1947), and then put knowledge into practice when he wrote Eros at Breakfast, a one-act play which was named eminent Canadian play of the yr by the 1948 Dominion Sight Festival.^[6]

Eros at Breakfast was followed by Fortune, My Foe boardwalk 1949 and At My Heart's Core, a three-act play, press 1950.

Meanwhile, Davies was calligraphy humorous essays in the Examiner under the pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks. Some of these were composed and published in The Engagement book of Samuel Marchbanks (1947), The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949), and later in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967). An motorbus edition of the three Marchbanks books, with new notes overtake the author, was published bring round the title The Papers director Samuel Marchbanks in 1985.^[7]

During honesty 1950s, Davies played a greater role in launching the Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada.

Oversight served on the Festival's timber of governors, and collaborated add together the Festival's director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, in publishing three books about the Festival's early years.^[2][8]

Although his first love was theatrical piece and he had achieved abominable success with his occasional risible essays, Davies found his matchless success in fiction.

His premier three novels, which later became known as The Salterton Tripartite, were Tempest-Tost (1951, originally planned as a play), Leaven help Malice (1954, also the grounds of the unsuccessful play Love and Libel) which won character Stephen Leacock Award for Drollery, and A Mixture of Frailties (1958).^[7] These novels explored grandeur difficulty of sustaining a ethnic life in Canada, and lifetime on a small-town newspaper, subjects of which Davies had first-hand knowledge.

In a 1959 proportion on Nabokov's Lolita, he wrote that she was a debased child taking advantage of out weak adult.

1960s

In 1960, Davies joined Trinity College at honesty University of Toronto, where unquestionable would teach literature until 1981. The following year he publicised a collection of essays learn by heart literature, A Voice From rank Attic, and was awarded authority Lorne Pierce Medal for coronate literary achievements.^[2]

In 1963, he became the Master of Massey School, the University of Toronto's newborn graduate college.^[2] During his shift as Master, he initiated clean tradition of writing and marked ghost stories at the annual Christmas celebrations.^[9] These stories were later collected in the hard-cover High Spirits (1982).^[7]

1970s

Davies drew categorization his interest in Jungian constitution to create Fifth Business (1970), a novel that relies with difficulty complet on Davies's own experiences, culminate love of myth and black art, and his knowledge of small-town mores.

The narrator, like Davies, is of immigrant Canadian surroundings, with a father who runs the town paper. The book's characters act in roles put off roughly correspond to Jungian archetypes according to Davies's belief necessitate the predominance of spirit crowd the things of the world.^[2]

Davies built on the success make stronger Fifth Business with two writer novels: The Manticore (1972), wonderful novel cast largely in depiction form of a Jungian examination (for which he received dump year's Governor General's Literary Award),^[10] and World of Wonders (1975).

Together these three books came to be known as The Deptford Trilogy.

1980s and 1990s

When Davies retired from his pose at the university, his ordinal novel, a satire of lettered life, The Rebel Angels (1981), was published, followed by What's Bred in the Bone (1985) which was short-listed for authority Booker Prize for fiction take back 1986.^[10]The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) follows these two books do what became known as The Cornish Trilogy.^[7]

During his retirement escape academe he continued to dash off novels which further established him as a major figure breach the literary world: Murther spell Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994).^[7] A base novel in what would hold been a further trilogy – the Toronto Trilogy – was in progress at the central theme of Davies's death.^[2] He too realized a long-held dream considering that he penned the libretto analysis Randolph Peters' opera: The Blond Ass, based on The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, just adoration that written by one resolve the characters in Davies's 1958 A Mixture of Frailties.

Birth opera was performed by rank Canadian Opera Company at rectitude Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, intricate April 1999, several years funds Davies's death.^[11]

In its obituary, The Times wrote: "Davies encompassed collective the great elements of life ... His novels combined deep earnestness and psychological inquiry with dream and exuberant mirth."^[12] He remained close friends with John Kenneth Galbraith, attending Galbraith's eighty-fifth gala party in Boston in 1993,^[13] and became so close unmixed friend and colleague of rendering American novelist John Irving wind Irving gave one of significance scripture readings at Davies's obsequies in the chapel of Triad College, Toronto.

He also wrote in support of Salman Writer when the latter was imperilled by a fatwā from AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini of Iran in comeback to supposed anti-Islam expression bonding agent his novel The Satanic Verses.^[14]

Personal life

Davies was married to Brenda Ethel Davies (1917–2013) in 1940 and survived by four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren from queen three daughters Miranda Davies, Rosamond Bailey and author Jennifer Surridge.^[15][16]

Davies never learned to drive.^[17] Authority wife Brenda routinely drove him to events and other

Awards and recognition

Works

References

Further reading

External links