Robertson Davies

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Robertson Davies bigraphy, stories - Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Robertson Davies : biography

28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995

William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL (August 28, 1913 – December 2, 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 is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself and to have detested.He himself responded to Peter Gzowski’s query as to whether he accepted the label, "Well, I would be delighted to accept it. In fact I think it’s an entirely honourable and desirable title but you know people are beginning to despise it." J. Madison Davis (ed.), Conversations with Robertson Davies (Mississippi University Press, 1989), p.99. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.

Awards and recognition

  • Won the Dominion Drama Festival Award for best Canadian play in 1948 for Eros at Breakfast.
  • Won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour in 1955 for Leaven of Malice.
  • Won the Lorne Pierce Medal for his literary achievements in 1961.
  • Won the Governor-General’s Literary Award in the English language fiction category in 1972 for The Manticore.
  • Short-listed for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986 for What’s Bred in the Bone.
  • Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Oxford, 1991.
  • First Canadian to become an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
  • Companion of the Order of Canada.
  • Park in Toronto named after him in 2007. Globe and Mail, May 31, 2007.

Davies in popular culture

  • Davies is one of the authors mentioned in the Moxy Früvous song "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors". The line "Who needs a shave? He’s Robertson Davies" makes reference to his long white beard.
  • In The Sacred Art of Stealing, Christopher Brookmyre (an admirer of Davies) has a character refer to a painting of "The Marriage at Cana", saying that some experts consider it to be a fake. This is a reference to a decidedly fake (although excellent) picture painted by Francis Cornish, the protagonist in What’s Bred in the Bone. Many of the characters in Brookmyre’s novels are named after characters in Davies’s books.
  • John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany contains several references to Davies’ novels, including strong echoes of Fifth Business; for example, the narrators of both novels work as teachers in Toronto in private schools (Bishop Strachan School in Meany and a fictionalisation of Upper Canada College in Davies’s novels).
  • Indie-rock band Tokyo Police Club references the gravel pit scene from Fifth Business in their song Your English Is Good.

Sources

  • Grant, Judith Skelton, Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, Viking, Toronto, 1994. ISBN 0-670-82557-3 (hard cover); ISBN 0-14-011452-1 (paperback)

Biography

Early life

Robertson Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario to William Rupert Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay. Growing up, Davies was surrounded by books and lively language. His father, Senator Davies, was a newspaperman, and both parents were voracious readers. He, in turn, read everything he could. He also participated in theatrical productions as a child, when he developed a lifelong interest in drama.

He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto from 1926 to 1932 and while there attended services at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. He would later leave the Presbyterian Church and join Anglicanism over objections to Calvinist theology. Davies later used his experience of the ceremonial of High Mass at St Mary Magdalene’s in his novel The Cunning Man.

After Upper Canada College, he studied at Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario from 1932 until 1935. At Queen’s, he was enrolled as a special student not working towards a degree, and wrote for the student paper, The Queen’s Journal. He left Canada to study at Balliol 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 the Old Vic Repertory Company in London. Also that year, Davies married Australian Brenda Mathews, whom he had met at Oxford, and who was then working as stage manager for the theatre.