Robertson Davies



         


Robertson Davies (August 28, 1913 - December 2, 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, and journalist. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished men-of-letters.

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Life

Growing up, Davies was surrounded by language. His father was a newspaper man, and both his parents were voracious readers. He, in turn, read everything he could. While Davies spent his first twenty-three working years at various newspapers in small town Ontario, his first passion was for the theatre, which is where he met and married his wife, Brenda. He was a playwright and director for many years, in England and Canada.

Davies later became the Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto (1961-1981).

His greatest novel is probably Fifth Business (1970), a curious book which draws heavily on Davies's love of myth and knowledge of small-town mores. The narrator, like Davies, is of immigrant Canadian background, with a father who runs the town paper. In a book full of singular characters, the central character is a simple, mentally defective woman named Mary Dempster, who may or may not be a saint.

Davies won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in the 1955 for Leaven of Malice.

Davies won the Governor-General's Literary Award in the English language fiction category in 1972 for The Manticore.

Davies' novel What's Bred in the Bone was nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986.

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Work

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Plays, novels, and other published writing:








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