Robertson Davies was born in
Ontario,
Canada in 1913 and died in 1995. He was an internationally famous author and his plays were well received in Canada. After receiving his
Bachelor of Literature from
Oxford in 1938 Davies pursued a
carrer as an
actor for two years before moving back to Canada in 1940. For twenty years of his carrier he worked in the magazine industry as an editor for the
Peterborough Examiner and a book reviewer for
Saturday Night. Robertson Davies was also at one point a professor at the
University of Toronto.
He was a tight and perfect writer who wrote most of his fiction in trilogies, his last trilogy The Toronto Books was left incomplete because of his death. He has a slightly slow and dense style that pays off with great character, story developement and human insight. Though he has some great lines, he is a tough guy to quote because it's the overall story that makes him so noteworthy, but here is one of my favorites to wet your lips.
"The Sphinx spoke in riddles -- very terrible riddles, for those who could not guess them died. But Oedipus guessed the riddle, and to the chagrin of the Sphinx was so great that it destroyed itself. I am but a poor shadow of Oedipus, I fear, and you, Mr. Yarrow, but a puny kitten of a Sphinx. But you are, like many another Sphinx of our modern world, an undereducated, brassy young pup, who thinks that gall can take the place of the authority of wisdom, and that a professional lingo can disguise his lack of thought. You aspire to be a Sphinx, without first putting yourself to the labor of acquiring a secret." - from Leaven of Malice
Bibliography
Fiction
The Salterton Trilogy
Tempest-Tost, 1951
Leaven of Malice, 1954
A Mixture of Frailties, 1958
The Deptford Trilogy
Fifth Business, 1970, His most read work
The Manticore, 1972
World of Wonders, 1975
Cornish Trilogy
The Rebel Angels, 1981
What's Bred In The Bone, 1985
The Lyre of Orpheus, 1988
The Toronto Books
Murther and Walking Spirits, 1991.
The Cunning Man, 1995.
He also wrote a collection of Ghost Stories in 1982 called High Spirits.
Plays
Eros at Breakfast and Other Plays, 1947 the title play is amazing
Fortune, My Foe, 1947
Essay's and Reviews
The Diary of Samuel March banks, 1947
The Table Talk of Samuel March banks, 1949
A Voice from the Attic, 1961
Samuel March banks' Almanac, 1967
The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies, 1979
Reading and Writing, 1993
Two essays by Davies, 1996
Happy Alchemy, 1997