Robertson Davies | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Davies in 1982 | |
| Born | (1913-08-28)28 August 1913 Thamesville, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | 2 December 1995(1995-12-02) (aged 82) Orangeville, Ontario, Canada |
| Occupation | Journalist, playwright, professor, critic, novelist |
| Alma mater | Queen's University (did not graduate) Balliol College, Oxford |
| Genre | Novels, plays, essays and reviews |
| Notable works | The Deptford Trilogy,The Cornish Trilogy,The Salterton Trilogy |
| Spouse | Brenda Ethel Davies (m. 1940, 1917–2013) |
| Children | 3 |
William Robertson DaviesCC OOnt FRSL FRSC (28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself.[1] Davies was the foundingMaster ofMassey College, a graduateresidential college associated with theUniversity of Toronto.
Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, the third son ofWilliam Rupert Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay.[2] Growing up, Davies was surrounded by books and lively language. His father, a member of theCanadian Senate from 1942 to his death in 1967, was a newspaperman fromWelshpool,Wales, and both parents were voracious readers. He followed in their footsteps and read everything he could. He also participated in theatrical productions as a child, where he developed a lifelong interest in drama.
He spent his formative years inRenfrew, Ontario (and renamed it as "Blairlogie", in his novelWhat's Bred in the Bone); many of the novel's characters are named after families he knew there. He attendedUpper Canada College in Toronto from 1926 to 1932 and while there attended services at theChurch of St. Mary Magdalene.[3] He would later leave thePresbyterian Church and joinAnglicanism over objections toCalvinist theology. Davies later used his experience of the ceremonial of High Mass at St. Mary Magdalene's in his novelThe Cunning Man.
After Upper Canada College, he studied atQueen's University atKingston, Ontario, from 1932 until 1935. According to theQueen's University Journal Davies enrolled as a special student not working towards a degree, because he was unable to pass the mathematics component of Queen's entrance exam.[4] At Queen's he wrote for the student paper,The Queen's Journal, where he wrote a literary column. He left Canada to study atBalliol College, Oxford, where he received a BLitt degree in 1938. The next year he published his thesis,Shakespeare's Boy Actors, and embarked on an acting career outside London. In 1940, he played small roles and did literary work for the director at theOld Vic Repertory Company in London. Also that year, Davies married AustralianBrenda Mathews, whom he had met at Oxford, and who was then working asstage manager for the theatre.[2] They spent their honeymoon in the Welsh countryside atFronfraith Hall,Abermule,Montgomery, the family house owned by Rupert Davies.[5]
Davies's early life provided him with themes and material to which he would often return in his later work, including the theme of Canadians returning to England to finish their education, and the theatre.
Davies and his new bride returned to Canada in 1940, where he took the position of literaryeditor atSaturday Night magazine. Two years later, he became editor of thePeterborough Examiner in the small city ofPeterborough, Ontario, northeast of Toronto. Again he was able to mine his experiences here for many of the characters and situations which later appeared in his plays and novels.[2]
Davies, along with family members William Rupert Davies and Arthur Davies, purchased several media outlets. Along with theExaminer newspaper, they owned theKingston Whig-Standard newspaper,CHEX-AM,CKWS-AM,CHEX-TV, andCKWS-TV.
During his tenure as editor of theExaminer, which lasted from 1942 to 1955 (he subsequently served as publisher from 1955 to 1965), Davies published a total of 18 books, produced several of his own plays, and wrote articles for various journals.[2] Davies set out his theory of acting in hisShakespeare for Young Players (1947), and then put theory into practice when he wroteEros at Breakfast, a one-act play which was named best Canadian play of the year by the 1948Dominion Drama Festival.[6]
Eros at Breakfast was followed byFortune, My Foe in 1949 andAt My Heart's Core, a three-act play, in 1950. Meanwhile, Davies was writing humorous essays in theExaminer under the pseudonymSamuel Marchbanks. Some of these were collected and published inThe Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947),The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949), and later inSamuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967). An omnibus edition of the three Marchbanks books, with new notes by the author, was published under the titleThe Papers of Samuel Marchbanks in 1985.[7]
During the 1950s, Davies played a major role in launching theStratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada. He served on the Festival's board of governors, and collaborated with the Festival's director, SirTyrone Guthrie, in publishing three books about the Festival's early years.[2][8]
Although his first love was drama and he had achieved some success with his occasional humorous essays, Davies found his greatest success in fiction. His first three novels, which later became known asThe Salterton Trilogy, wereTempest-Tost (1951, originally conceived as a play),Leaven of Malice (1954, also the basis of the unsuccessful playLove and Libel) which won theStephen Leacock Award for Humour, andA Mixture of Frailties (1958).[7] 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. In a 1958 essay on Nabokov'sLolita inSaturday Night, he wrote that the theme was "the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child".[9]
In 1960, Davies joinedTrinity College at the University of Toronto, where he would teach literature until 1981. The following year he published a collection of essays on literature,A Voice From the Attic, and was awarded theLorne Pierce Medal for his literary achievements.[2]
In 1963, he became the Master ofMassey College, the University of Toronto's new graduate college.[2] During his stint as Master, he initiated a tradition of writing and tellingghost stories at the yearly Christmas celebrations.[10] These stories were later collected in the bookHigh Spirits (1982).[7]
Davies drew on his interest inJungian psychology to createFifth Business (1970), a novel that relies heavily on Davies's own experiences, his love ofmyth andmagic, and his knowledge of small-townmores. The narrator, like Davies, is of immigrant Canadian background, with a father who runs the town paper. The book's characters act in roles that roughly correspond to Jungianarchetypes according to Davies's belief in the predominance of spirit over the things of the world.[2]
Davies built on the success ofFifth Business with two more novels:The Manticore (1972), a novel cast largely in the form of aJungian analysis (for which he received that year'sGovernor General's Literary Award),[11] andWorld of Wonders (1975). Together these three books came to be known asThe Deptford Trilogy.
When Davies retired from his position at the university, his seventh novel, a satire of academic life,The Rebel Angels (1981), was published, followed byWhat's Bred in the Bone (1985) which was short-listed for theBooker Prize for fiction in 1986.[11]The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) follows these two books in what became known asThe Cornish Trilogy.[7]
During his retirement from academe he continued to write novels which further established him as a major figure in the literary world:Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) andThe Cunning Man (1994).[7] A third novel in what would have been a further trilogy – the Toronto Trilogy – was in progress at the time of Davies's death.[2] He also realized a long-held dream when he penned thelibretto toRandolph Peters' opera:The Golden Ass, based onThe Metamorphoses ofLucius Apuleius, just like that written by one of the characters in Davies's 1958A Mixture of Frailties. The opera was performed by theCanadian Opera Company at theHummingbird Centre in Toronto, in April 1999, several years after Davies's death.[12]
In its obituary,The Times wrote: "Davies encompassed all the great elements of life ... His novels combined deep seriousness and psychological inquiry with fantasy and exuberant mirth."[13] He remained close friends withJohn Kenneth Galbraith, attending Galbraith's eighty-fifth birthday party inBoston in 1993,[14] and became so close a friend and colleague of the American novelistJohn Irving that Irving gave one of the scripture readings at Davies's funeral in the chapel ofTrinity College, Toronto. He also wrote in support ofSalman Rushdie when the latter was threatened by afatwā fromAyatollahRuhollah Khomeini of Iran in reaction to supposed anti-Islam expression in his novelThe Satanic Verses.[15]
Davies was married to Brenda Ethel Davies (1917–2013) in 1940 and survived by four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren from his three daughters Miranda Davies, Rosamond Bailey and author Jennifer Surridge.[16][17]
Davies never learned to drive.[18] His wife Brenda routinely drove him to events and other excursions.
In 1990, Davies delivered the fifthErasmus Lecture, titledLiterature and Moral Purpose, sponsored byFirst Things magazine and the Institute on Religion and Public Life. In his address, Davies reflected on the relationship between literature, imagination, and ethics, arguing that serious fiction has an essential role in shaping moral understanding. His lecture continued the Erasmus series’ exploration of how culture and faith inform the public and intellectual life of the modern world.[19]
Fictional essays
edited by the author into:
Criticism
'Their marriage was quite a love story and she was incredibly supportive. She was his first reader, and she drove him everywhere — he never learned to drive — and she organized his life to his convenience. That's why we included letters from when he went to Ireland. He was not very good at being away from her.'
