Robertson Davies Biography Quotes 30 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
William Robertson Davies was born on August 28, 1913, in Thamesville, Ontario, into a household where newspapers and books were part of the daily atmosphere. His father, William Rupert Davies, was a prominent newspaperman who later served in the Canadian Senate, and his mother, Florence Sheppard McKay, encouraged a lifelong engagement with literature and the arts. Growing up in Ontario in a family that owned and managed newspapers, Davies became familiar early with printing rooms, editorial judgments, and the public responsibilities of a writer. The family milieu fostered both a professional respect for the printed word and an enduring curiosity about drama, history, and belief that would later echo through his fiction.

Education and Apprenticeship in Theatre
Davies studied in Ontario before attending Queen's University in Kingston and then Balliol College, Oxford, where he deepened his love of drama and Renaissance literature. Oxford also gave him a first-hand sense of scholarly tradition that would later shape his understanding of colleges and learned communities. After Oxford he worked in London in and around the theatre, most notably with the Old Vic, an experience that cemented his belief that performance and storytelling were inseparable arts. In London he met Brenda, an actor and stage professional, whom he married. Their partnership provided steady encouragement throughout his writing and academic life, and together they established a family that would remain at the center of his private world.

Journalism, Editing, and Samuel Marchbanks
Returning to Canada during the Second World War, Davies entered newspaper life in earnest at the Peterborough Examiner, a paper with which his father was closely associated. He served first as editor and then as publisher, roles that demanded a daily discipline of observation and clarity. He reviewed books and wrote editorials but also created the pseudonymous commentator Samuel Marchbanks, whose witty, aphoristic columns examined Canadian manners and provincial idiosyncrasies. These pieces, later collected in volumes such as The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, revealed a comic voice undergirded by erudition. The newsroom taught him concision and timing; Marchbanks taught him how satire could open doors to serious themes.

Playwright, Critic, and Man of Letters
Even as a newspaperman, Davies was a working dramatist and a critic. His plays were staged by Canadian companies and discussed widely in a cultural community hungry for professional theatre. He wrote essays and lectures on literature and drama that circulated nationally, arguing for a confident, cosmopolitan Canadian culture that could converse with Europe without losing its own accent. In this world he moved among editors, actors, and critics; the constellation of colleagues at the University of Toronto and in the Toronto theatre scene formed an important circle around him. The publisher Jack McClelland supported his books in Canada, helping to bring his fiction to a broad readership.

The Novelist: Trilogies and Wider Recognition
Davies's novels made his name internationally. The Salterton Trilogy, Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, and A Mixture of Frailties, grew from his acute feel for small-city life, musical ambition, and the comic potential of cultural aspiration. With The Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, he achieved a decisive breakthrough: these books combined storytelling with psychological inquiry and a fascination with myth. His reading of Carl Jung's ideas provided a vocabulary for exploring guilt, vocation, and the shadowed corners of personal history. The Manticore received the Governor General's Award, and the trilogy's blend of carnival, sainthood, and memory made Davies a major figure in late twentieth-century fiction.

He continued with the Cornish Trilogy, The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, and The Lyre of Orpheus, which moved into the academic world and the art market, subjects he knew intimately. These novels braided satire with metaphysical curiosity and confirmed his reputation for elegant prose and sly characterization. Later works, including Murther and Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man, turned to journalism, Toronto society, and the healing arts, completing a career-long dialogue with conscience, community, art, and the masks people wear.

Academic Leadership and Massey College
Invited to the University of Toronto, Davies became a teacher of drama and literature and the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college established through the Massey Foundation. In shaping the college he drew on his Oxford experience, but he adapted those traditions to Canadian realities, encouraging a collegial culture where scholars, writers, and journalists could meet across disciplines. In this academic sphere he was surrounded by colleagues and friends who helped bring the college to life; among the most influential figures in his intellectual orbit in Toronto was the critic Northrop Frye, whose conversation and criticism formed part of the city's vigorous literary climate. Davies presided at high table with characteristic ceremony, delivering after-dinner talk that mixed wit with moral seriousness, and he mentored generations of students who went on to careers in writing, publishing, and the arts.

Honours, Public Voice, and Personal Life
As his renown grew, Davies received major Canadian distinctions, including national literary awards and appointment as a Companion of the Order of Canada. He was much in demand as a lecturer, offering polished addresses that later appeared in collections such as A Voice from the Attic. His public image, urbane, bearded, and droll, was never far from the inner craftsman who spent long hours revising manuscripts, keeping correspondence, and weighing scholarly footnotes against narrative momentum. At home, Brenda was a steady presence and first reader; their family life, including the raising of three daughters, remained a private counterpoint to the ceremonious life of lectures and college occasions.

Later Years and Death
Davies continued to publish into the 1990s, returning to newsroom lore, music, medicine, and Toronto's layered history. He remained engaged with the University of Toronto community and with readers across Canada and abroad, where his books were translated and taught. He died on December 2, 1995, in Ontario, at the age of eighty-two. The tributes that followed emphasized the breadth of his achievement, journalist, playwright, critic, professor, and above all novelist, and the uncommon coherence of a life that joined the newspaper office, the stage, the college hall, and the study.

Themes and Legacy
Davies's fiction is notable for its civilizing faith in culture and its insistence that comedy can carry serious truths. He wrote about Canadians as heirs to European traditions and participants in a modern, plural society. His work foregrounds vocation, guilt, wonder, and the mysterious ways art instructs life. He turned small cities and academic common rooms into theaters of large consequence, making room for saints, magicians, impostors, and scholars. The people closest to him, his parents, whose lives in letters and public service gave him his professional horizon; Brenda, who partnered his commitments to theatre and writing; and colleagues and publishers who sustained his craft, were all part of the ecology that made his career possible. Today, novels like Fifth Business and What's Bred in the Bone remain staples of reading lists, and his example as a cultivated, witty public intellectual continues to guide conversations about what it means to be a Canadian writer of the world.

Our collection contains 30 quotes who is written by Robertson, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Truth - Music - Love.