Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Canadian novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for three trilogies about Canadian life that are distinguished by their firm moral sense, narrative strength, and elegant use of myth, reality, and illusion. Davies uses a variety of approaches—including comedy, satire, myth, coming-of-age fiction, allegory, and historical romance—to depict Canadian subjects. His fiction is concerned primarily with the survival of the human spirit in his characters, who quest for their own place in the world while trying not to hurt others.

Born William Robertson Davies in Thamesville, Ontario, he was educated at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and at Balliol College, University of Oxford, in Oxford, England. Later he became an actor; the editor and publisher of the Examiner (Peterborough, Ontario) from 1942 to 1962; and a professor of English at the University of Toronto from 1960 to 1981. As a teacher he specialized in English drama and was master of Massey College.

Davies's three noted trilogies are the Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost, 1951; Leaven of Malice, 1954; and A Mixture of Frailties, 1958), which is slow-paced in the style of the Victorian novel (see English Literature: The Victorian Novel); the Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, 1970; The Manticore, 1972; and World of Wonders, 1976), which is heavily influenced by Davies's Jungian views of psychology (see Carl Gustav Jung); and the Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, 1981; What's Bred in the Bone, 1985; and The Lyre of Orpheus, 1988), which draws on Jungian themes and is heavily allegorical. Davies also wrote four volumes of the collected diaries and essays of “Samuel Marchbanks,” a fictional Canadian provincial whom Davies called his “cranky alter ego.” As a playwright, Davies achieved his greatest success with historical dramas employing 18th- and 19th-century settings, including At My Heart's Core (1952), A Jig for the Gypsy (1954), Hunting Stuart (1955), and General Confession (1956). His final work, the novel The Cunning Man, was published in 1994.