Writer, playwright, essayist, and critic, born in Thamesville, Ontario, SE Canada. He studied in Canada and at Balliol College, Oxford, worked as a teacher, actor, and journalist, was editor of the Peterborough Examiner (194263), and became professor of English at the University of Toronto (196081). His reputation as one of Canada's foremost writers rests on three trilogies: the Salterton Trilogy, comprising Tempest-Tost (1951), Leaven of Malice (1954), and A Mixture of Frailties (1958); the Deptford Trilogy, comprising Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975); and the Cornish Trilogy, comprising The Rebel Angels (1981), What's Bred in the Bone (1985, Booker shortlist), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988). His plays included Fortune My Foe (1948), Love and Libel (1960), and Pontiac and the Green Man (1977). His writing satirizes bourgeois provincialism, and combines humour, fantasy, religion, astrology, and Jungian theory.
William Robertson Davies|
Robertson Davies in 1984 |
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| Born: |
28 August 1913 Thamesville, Ontario, Canada |
|---|---|
| Died: |
2 December 1995 Orangeville, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation(s): | Journalist, playwright, professor, critic, novelist |
| Nationality: | Canadian |
| Genre(s): | novels, plays, essays and reviews |
William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (born August 28, 1913 at Thamesville, Ontario, and died December 2, 1995 at Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor.
Biography
Early life
Growing up, Davies was surrounded by books and language.
Middle years
Davies and his new bride returned to Canada in 1940, where he took the position of literary editor at the magazine Saturday Night.
Davies, along with family members William Rupert Davies and Arthur Davies, purchased several media outlets.
During his tenure as editor of the Examiner, which lasted from 1942 to 1955, and when he was publisher from 1955 to 1965, Davies published a total 18 books, produced several of his own plays and wrote articles for various journals.
For example, Davies set out his theory of acting in his Shakespeare for Young Players (1947) and then put theory into practice when he wrote Eros at Breakfast, a one-act play which was named best Canadian play of the year by the 1948 Dominion Drama Festival. Some of these were collected and published in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947), The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949), and later in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967). (An omnibus edition of the three Marchbanks books, with new notes by the author, was published under the title The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks in 1985.)
Also during the 1950s, Davies played a major role in launching the Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada.
Although his first love was drama and he had achieved some success with his occasional humorous essays, Davies found greater success in fiction. These novels explored the difficulty of sustaining a cultural life in Canada, and life on a small-town newspaper, subjects of which Davies had first-hand knowledge.
The 1960s
In 1960 Davies joined Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he would teach literature until 1981.
The 1970s
Davies drew on his interest in Jungian psychology to create what was perhaps his greatest novel: Fifth Business (1970), a book that draws heavily on Davies' own experiences, his love of myth and magic and his knowledge of small-town mores.
Davies built on the success of Fifth Business with two more novels: The Manticore (1972), a novel cast largely in the form of a Jungian analysis (for which he received that year's Governor-General's Literary Award), and World of Wonders (1975).
The 1980s and 1990s
When Davies retired from his position at the University, his seventh novel, a satire of academic life, The Rebel Angels (1981), was published, followed by What's Bred in the Bone (1985).
During his retirement he continued to write novels which further established him as a major figure in the literary world: The Lyre of Orpheus (1988), Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994). He also realized a long-held dream when he penned the libretto to an opera: The Golden Ass, based on The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius, just like that written by one of the characters in Davies' 1958 A Mixture of Frailties.
Davies was a fine public speaker: deft, often humorous, and unafraid to be unfashionable.
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