Davies, Robertson 1913–1995

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Davies, Robertson 1913–1995

[A pseudonym]

(William Robertson Davies, Samuel Marchbanks

PERSONAL: Born August 28, 1913, in Thamesville, Ontario, Canada; died of a stroke December 2, 1995, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; son of William Rupert (a publisher) and Florence Sheppard (McKay) Davies; married Brenda Matthews (a stage manager and editor), February 2, 1940; children: Miranda, Jennifer (Mrs. C.T. Surridge), Rosamund (Mrs. John Cunnington). Education: Attended Upper Canada College, Toronto, and Queen's University at Kingston; Balliol College, Oxford, B.Litt., 1938.

CAREER: Old Vic Company, London, England, teacher and actor, 1938–40, appeared in Traitor's Gate, 1938, She Stoops to Conquer, 1939, Saint Joan, 1939, and The Taming of the Shrew, 1939; Saturday Night, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, literary editor, 1940–42; Examiner, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, editor and publisher, 1942–62; University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, professor of English, 1960–81, master of Massey College, 1962–81, emeritus professor and master, 1981–95. Also worked as a newspaperman for Whig Standard, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Senator, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Stratford, Ontario, Canada.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Canada (fellow), Playwrights Union of Canada, Royal Society of Literature (fellow), American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (honorary member), Authors Guild, Authors League of America, Dramatists Guild, Writers' Union (Canada), PEN International.

AWARDS, HONORS: Louis Jouvet Prize for directing, Dominion Drama Festival, 1949; Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, 1954, for Leaven of Malice; Lorne Pierce Medal, Royal Society of Canada, 1961; Companion of the Order of Canada, 1972; Governor General's Award for fiction, 1972, for The Manticore; LL.D., University of Alberta, 1957, Queen's University, 1962, University of Manitoba, 1972, University of Calgary, 1975, and University of Toronto, 1981; D.Litt., McMaster University, 1959, University of Windsor, 1971, York University, 1973, Mount Allison University, 1973, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1974, University of Western Ontario, 1974, McGill University, 1974, Trent University, 1974, University of Lethbridge, 1981, University of Waterloo, 1981, University of British Columbia, 1983, University of Santa Clara, 1985 Trinity College, Dublin, 1990, University of Oxford, 1991, and University of Wales, 1995; LH.D., University of Rochester, 1983, Dowling College, NY, 1992, and Loyola University, Chicago, 1994; D.C.L., Bishop's University, 1967; D.Hum. Litt., University of Rochester, 1983; honorary fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Trinity College, University of Toronto, 1987; World Fantasy Convention Award for High Spirits; City of Toronto Book Award, Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for Fiction, and Booker Prize shortlist, all 1986, all for What's Bred in the Bone; Banff Centre School of Fine Arts National Award, 1986 and Lifetime Achievement Award from Toronto Arts Awards, both 1986; Gold Medal of Honor for Literature from National Arts Club (New York City), 1987; Order of Ontario, Diplome d'honneur, Canada Confederation of the Arts, Molson Prize in Arts, Canadian Council, and Neil Gunn International Fellow, Scottish Arts Council, all 1988; honorary fellowship, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Shakespeare's Boy Actors, Dent (London, England), 1939, Russell (New York, NY), 1964.

Shakespeare for Young Players: A Junior Course, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1942.

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (collection of newspaper pieces originally published under pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks; also see below), Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1947.

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (collection of newspaper pieces originally published under pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks; also see below), Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1949.

(With Tyrone Guthrie and Grant Macdonald) Renown at Stratford: A Record of the Shakespearean Festival in Canada, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1953, reprinted, 1971.

(With Tyrone Guthrie and Grant Macdonald) Twice Have the Trumpets Sounded: A Record of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Canada, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1954.

(With Tyrone Guthrie, Boyd Neal, and Tanya Moisei-witsch) Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd: A Record of the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Canada, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1955.

A Voice from the Attic, Knopf (New York, NY), 1960, published as The Personal Art: Reading to Good Purpose, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1961, reprinted, Darby Books, 1983.

Le Jeu de centenaire, Comission du Centenaire, c. 1967.

Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (collection of newspaper pieces originally published under pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks; also see below), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1967.

The Heart of a Merry Christmas, Macmillan (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1970.

Stephen Leacock, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1970.

(Editor and author of introduction) Feast of Stephen: An Anthology of Some of the Less Familiar Writings of Stephen Leacock, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1970.

(With Michael R. Booth, Richard Southern, Frederick Marker, and Lise-Lone Marker) The Revels History of Drama in English, Volume VI: 1750–1880, Methuen (London, England), 1975.

One Half of Robertson Davies: Provocative Pronouncements on a Wide Range of Topics, Macmillan (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977, published as One Half of Robertson Davies, Viking (New York, NY), 1978.

The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies, edited by Judith Skelton Grant, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1979.

The Well-Tempered Critic: One Man's View of Theatre and Letters in Canada, edited by Judith Skelton Grant, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1981.

The Mirror of Nature (lectures), University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983.

The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks (contains portions of The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks, and Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack), Irwin Publishing, 1985, Viking (New York, NY), 1986.

Conversations with Robertson Davies, edited by J. Madison Davis, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1989.

Reading and Writing (lectures), University of Utah Press (Salt Lake City, UT), 1994.

The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books, Viking (New York, NY), 1997.

Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre, Viking (New York, NY), 1998.

For Your Eye Alone: The Letters of Robertson Davies, edited by Judith Skelton Grant, Viking (New York, NY), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Studies in Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, edited by Robert G. Lawrence and Samuel L. Macey, English Literary Studies, University of Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 1980. Columnist under pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks. Davies's unpublished papers are collected in the National Archives of Canada.

PLAYS

Overlaid (also see below), produced in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, 1947.

Eros at Breakfast (also see below), produced in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1948.

The Voice of the People (also see below), produced in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1948.

At the Gates of the Righteous (also see below), produced in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, 1948.

Hope Deferred (also see below), produced in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1948.

Fortune, My Foe (first produced in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1948), Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1949.

Eros at Breakfast and Other Plays (contains Eros at Breakfast, Overlaid, The Voice of the People, At the Gates of the Righteous, and Hope Deferred), with introduction by Tyrone Guthrie, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1949, revised edition published as Four Favorite Plays, 1968.

King Phoenix (also see below), produced in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, 1950.

At My Heart's Core (first produced in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, 1950), Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1952.

A Masque of Aesop (first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May, 1952), Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1952.

Hunting Stuart (also see below), produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1955.

A Jig for the Gypsy (first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1954), Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1955.

Love and Libel (based on Davies' novel Leaven of Malice; see below; first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, November, 1960; first produced on Broadway at Martin Beck Theatre, December, 1960), Studio Duplicating Service, 1960.

A Masque of Mr. Punch (first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1962), Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1963.

The Voice of the People, Book Society of Canada, 1968.

Hunting Stuart and Other Plays (contains Hunting Stuart, King Phoenix, and General Confession), New Press, 1972.

Brothers in the Black Art, first produced on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1974.

Question Time (first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1975), Macmillan (New York, NY), 1975.

Pontiac and the Green Man, first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1977.

"Hunting Stuart" and "The Voice of the People": Two Plays, Simon & Pierre (Niagara Falls, NY), 1994.

(Author of libretto) The Golden Ass (opera), music by Randolph Peters, first produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1999.

FICTION

High Spirits (stories), Viking (New York, NY), 1983, reprinted, Penguin (New York, NY), 2002.

Murther and Walking Spirits (novel), Viking (New York, NY), 1991.

The Cunning Man (novel), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.

"SALTERTON TRILOGY"; NOVELS

Tempest-Tost, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1951, Rinehart (New York, NY), 1952, reprinted, Penguin (New York, NY), 1980.

Leaven of Malice, Clarke, Irwin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1954, Scribners (New York, NY), 1955, reprinted, Penguin (New York, NY), 1980.

A Mixture of Frailties, Scribners (New York, NY), 1958, reprinted, Penguin (New York, NY), 1980.

The Salterton Trilogy (contains Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, and A Mixture of Frailties), Penguin (New York, NY), 1986.

"DEPTFORD TRILOGY"; NOVELS

Fifth Business, Viking (New York, NY), 1970, reprinted, Penguin (New York, NY), 2001.

The Manticore, Viking (New York, NY), 1972.

World of Wonders, Macmillan (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1975, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

The Deptford Trilogy (contains Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders), Penguin (New York, NY), 1985.

"CORNISH TRILOGY"; NOVELS

The Rebel Angels, Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

What's Bred in the Bone, Viking (New York, NY), 1985.

The Lyre of Orpheus, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

SIDELIGHTS: Robertson Davies was considered one of Canada's premier men of letters by virtue of his fiction, journalism, and essays on topics relating to literature and the theater. Davies trained for a career on the stage with London's prestigious Old Vic Company, but during World War II he returned to his native Canada and became internationally known for his novels of Canadian manners. America contributor Russell M. Brown wrote, "Learning how to move from constructing a character on the stage to creating one with words on the page, [Davies] exhibited the sharp eye for foible and pretension that later distinguished his fiction." In a Maclean's obituary for the author, Peter C. Newman concluded, "Robertson Davies was, if not a saint, certainly a genius, and most assuredly a sage and a visionary. It was to his credit and to our gain that he was also such a magnificent storyteller."

Davies was already well established on the Canadian literary scene when his Deptford Trilogy, consisting of the novels Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, brought him international attention. "These novels," Claude Bissell stated in Canadian Literature, "comprise the major piece of prose fiction in Canadian literature—in scope, in the constant interplay of wit and intelligence, in the persistent attempt to find a pattern in this [as Davies states in the trilogy] 'life of marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces.'" The trilogy traces the lives of three Canadian men from the small town of Deptford, Ontario, who are bound together by a single tragic event from their childhood. At the age of ten, Dunstan Ramsay and Percy "Boy" Staunton are throwing snowballs at one another. Staunton throws a snowball at Ramsay which contains a rock. Ramsay ducks. The snowball strikes Mrs. Mary Dempster in the head, causing her to give birth prematurely to a son, Paul Dempster, and to have a mental breakdown that ends in her permanent hospitalization. Each novel of the trilogy revolves around this tragedy and each deals primarily with one of the three men involved: Fifth Business with Dunstan Ramsay, who becomes a teacher; The Manticore with Boy Staunton, a politician; and World of Wonders with Paul Dempster, a stage magician. Fifth Business "provides the brickwork," John Alwyne observed in the New Statesman, "the two later volumes, the lath and plaster. But what a magnificent building is the result. [The trilogy] bears comparison with any fiction of the last decade."

Davies did not intend to write a trilogy when he first began Fifth Business. His initial story idea prompted him to write the novel, he once told an interviewer for Canada's Time magazine, "but he found almost as soon as he had finished that it wasn't all he wanted to say." So Davies wrote The Manticore to tell more of his story. Reviewers then asked "to hear about the magician who appeared in the other two novels," Davies explained, "and I thought 'Well, I know a lot about magicians' and I wrote the third book."

Despite the unplanned development of the trilogy, it garnered extensive critical praise and each volume became an international bestseller. The first volume, Fifth Business, is, Sam Solecki maintained in Canadian Forum, "Davies' masterpiece and … among the handful of Canadian novels that count." In the form of an autobiographical letter written by Dunstan Ramsay upon his retirement, the novel delineates the course of Ramsay's life and how it was shaped by the pivotal snowball incident. Because he avoided being hit and thereby caused Mrs. Dempster's injury, Ramsay has lived his life suffering under a tremendous guilt. This guilt inspired an interest in hagiology, the study of saints, and Ramsay becomes in later years the foremost Protestant authority on the lives of the saints. "All the lore on saints and myth," Judith Skelton Grant stated in Book Forum, "is firmly connected to the central character, reflecting his interests, showing how he thinks, influencing his life, and playing a part in his interpretation of events." It is in terms of hagiology that Ramsay eventually comes to a realization about himself. His autobiographical letter finally "leads Ramsay to comprehension of his own nature—which is not saintly," John Skow reported in Time.

Much of this same story is reexamined in The Manticore, the second novel of the trilogy, which takes place after the mysterious death of prominent Canadian politician Boy Staunton. Staunton has been found drowned in his car at the bottom of Lake Ontario, a rock in his mouth. Investigation proves the rock to be the same one Staunton threw at Mrs. Dempster some sixty years before. Ramsay, obsessed with the incident, had saved it. But how Staunton died, and why he had the rock in his mouth, is unknown. During a performance by the magician Magnus Eisengrim—Paul Dempster's stage name—a floating brass head is featured that answers questions from the audience. Staunton's son David asks the head an explosive question, "Who killed Boy Staunton?" In the tumult caused by his outburst, David runs from the theater. His breakdown and subsequent Jungian psychoanalysis in Switzerland make up the rest of the novel. During his analysis, David comes to terms with his late father's career. "The blend of masterly characterization, cunning plot, shifting point of view, and uncommon detail, all fixed in the clearest, most literate prose, is superbly achieved," wrote Pat Barclay in Canadian Literature.

The life story of Paul Dempster is told in World of Wonders, the final volume of the trilogy. As a young boy, Dempster is kidnaped by a homosexual stage magician while visiting a traveling carnival. He stays with the carnival as it makes its way across Canada, intent on becoming a magician himself by learning the secrets of the man who abducted him. While learning the trade, Dempster works inside a mechanical fortune-telling gypsy, operating the gears that make it seem lifelike. When the carnival breaks up, he heads for Europe, where he finds work as a double for a popular stage actor. With his knowledge of magic and the stage manner he has acquired while working at the carnival, Dempster strikes out on his own as a magician, becoming one of the most successful acts on the continent. World of Wonders, Michael Mewshaw stated in the New York Times Book Review, is "a novel of stunning verbal energy and intelligence." L.J. Davis of New Republic believed the novel's "situation is shamelessly contrived, and the language fairly reeks of the footlights (to say nothing of, yes, brimstone)." Furthermore, Davis contended that World of Wonders "isn't so much a novel as it is a brilliant act whose strength lies in the complexity of its symbolism and the perfection of its artifice." It is, Davis judged, "a splendid conclusion" to the trilogy.

In each of these novels the lead character undergoes a psychological transformation. Dunstan Ramsay finds the key to himself in the study of saints and myth, using these archetypes for greater self-understanding. David Staunton relies on Jungian psychoanalysis to help him in discovering his true nature and in coming to terms with his father's disreputable life and mysterious death. Paul Dempster learns about reality and illusion from his work as a magician and his life in the theater, gaining insight into his own personality. The three novels are, Bissell explained, "essentially parts of a whole: three parallel pilgrimages." Grant, too, saw the essential search in which the three characters are engaged. She believed they explore different aspects of nature, however. "Dunstan moves toward God and Boy toward the Devil," Grant wrote, while Dempster "experiences both." The experience of both good and evil, Grant believed, allows those dark aspects of the mind to be exposed and confronted. "Not everything that has been labeled Evil proves to be so," Grant stated, "nor all that has been repressed ought to remain so. And the genuinely evil and justifiably banished are weaker if faced and understood." Grant felt that "together with the vigorous, lively and eccentric narrators of the [Deptford] trilogy, these moral … mythic and psychological ideas have given these books a place among the dozen significant works of fiction published in Canada during the seventies." Peter S. Prescott, writing in News-week, saw the revelations of the three characters in similar terms. Davies, he contended, "means to recharge the world with a wonder it has lost, to re-create through the intervention of saints and miracles, psychoanalysts and sleight-of-hand a proper sense of awe at life's mystery and a recognition of the price that must be paid for initiation into that mystery."

Davies followed the Deptford Trilogy with another triptych, the Cornish Trilogy. "By the Cornish Trilogy, the Jungian matter has been absorbed into the novel's strategies allowing some experimentation with realism," observed a contributor to Contemporary Novelists. "What's Bred in the Bone, a revelation of the enigma of Francis Cornish, is narrated by Francis's psychic figures, his 'daimons.' The Lyre of Orpheus contains a commentary by the long-dead E.T.A. Hoffman, while the narrator of Murther & Walking Spirits is killed in the opening sentence to describe the novel from a vivid afterlife." The critic concluded: "These playful gestures of experimentation are part of the witty pleasures of Davies's novels but are harnessed to conservative ends." Russell M. Brown wrote: "For many, [the] 1970's novels remain the most appealing of all of Davies's fiction. But the Cornish trilogy of the 80's demonstrated the full range of Davies's wit and erudition and showed him attaining a new maturity. By marrying his previous concerns with myth and manners to large considerations of literary tradition, cultural conditions, art history, and opera, these later novels—The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, and The Lyre of Orpheus—form a broad inquiry into the artist's relationship to the past."

Davies's 1994 novel, The Cunning Man, "is as substantial and as entertaining as any he has written," claimed Isabel Colegate in the New York Times Book Review. According to Paul Gray in Time, Davies "entertains with an old-fashioned fictional mixture that he seems to have invented anew: keen social observations delivered with wit, intelligence and free-floating philosophical curiosity." John Bemrose contended in Maclean's that "The Cunning Man takes the form of a memoir, but it reads more like an extended monologue by its narrator, Dr. Jonathan Hullah, a Toronto doctor nearing the end of his career." An aging physician who has assented to a series of interviews with a reporter writing a number of articles about "old Toronto," Hullah employs a notebook to separate his public reminiscences from his private reflections—those snippets of information and fact which he agrees to reveal in print, and those personal incidents in his own past which he prefers to keep to himself. As the notebook containing his personal thoughts and musings grows, he realizes he is actually recording and defining his own character analysis, creating a true lifetime retrospective. Although as a physician Hullah relies on scientific observation and qualitative inquiry, he combines his diagnostic approach with consideration of other factors, including psychological and spiritual elements. In an interview with Mel Gussow in the New York Times Book Review, the reviewer noted, "Davies has said he is 'a moralist possessed by humor,' a description that would serve equally for Dr. Hullah, who, he says, 'is a moralist not because he dictates morals but because he observes what's wrong with his patients.' For both the author and the character, physical and emotional causes of disease are inseparable." As Stephen Smith described it in Quill and Quire, Hullah "makes his narration a guide through a landscape full of recognizable Davies landmarks. There is a suspicious death on a church altar, a miracle, a murder, a disappointment in love, and sundry asides into … the past of that most 'flat-footed, hard-breathing' of Canadian cities, Toronto, as seen from its upper crust." Colegate further commented that the novel "enlarges joyously on many of [the author's] familiar themes; the one that underlies all the others is his belief that religion and science, poetry and medicine, theater and psychoanalysis have a kind of meeting place where no one is quite sufficient without the others."

The recurring theme of self-discovery follows the pattern established by psychologist Carl Jung, although Davies did not adhere strictly to Jungian psychology. He explored a number of models for "complete human identity," Patricia Monk claimed in her The Smaller Infinity: The Jungian Self in the Novels of Robertson Davies. Monk felt that though he had a "deep and long-lasting affinity with Jung … Davies eventually moves beyond his affinity … to a more impartial assessment of Jungianism as simply one way of looking at the universe, one myth among a number of others." Still, Roger Sale suggested in the New York Review of Books that, in common with the Jungian belief in archetypal influence on the human mind, Davies presents in his fiction characters who "discover the meaning of their lives, by discovering the ways those lives conform to ancient patterns." Peter Baltensperger, writing in Canadian Literature, saw this as a consistent theme in all of Davies's fiction. This theme Baltensperger defined as "the conquest of one's Self in the inner struggle and the knowledge of oneself as fully human."

Davies clarified the primary concern in all of his work in a short piece he wrote for Contemporary Novelists. "The theme which lies at the root of all my novels is the isolation of the human spirit," he explained. "I have not attempted to deal with it in a gloomy fashion but rather to demonstrate that what my characters do that might be called really significant is done on their own volition and usually contrary to what is expected of them. This theme is worked out in terms of characters who are trying to escape from early influences and find their own place in the world but who are reluctant to do so in a way that will bring pain and disappointment to others."

Many critics have labeled Davies a traditionalist who was a bit old-fashioned in his approach to writing. I.M. Owen, writing in Saturday Night, for example, placed Davies "curiously apart from the main stream of contemporary fiction." A critic for the Washington Post Book World characterized Davies as "a true novelist writing imagined stories, wonderful stories full of magic and incandescence, thought and literary art," something the critic did not find in other contemporary fiction. Davies was known as a moralist who believed in a tangible good and evil, a fine storyteller who consciously used theatrical melodrama to enliven his plots, and a master of a wide variety of genres and styles. In the New York Times Book Review, Peter Marks characterized the author as "a keen observer, defender and interpreter of all things Canadian, and to say that his status in that vast, sparsely populated nation was a kind of free-thinking Shavian figure is to reflect on both the breadth and vitality of his intellect and, perhaps, the all-too-limited boundaries of his influence, at least insofar as affairs of the day were concerned."

Calling Davies "a compellingly inventive storyteller" who garnered an "affectionate following," James Idema noted in the Chicago Tribune Book World that the continued appeal of Davies's fiction lies in "his way of placing ordinary humans in the midst of extraordinary events, of bringing innocent, resolutely straight characters into contact with bonafide exotics." Collections of Davies's essays have continued to appear posthumously, many of them edited by his wife and daughter. The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading and Writing and the World of Books contains literary pieces, and Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and Theatre presents his views on various theatrical productions and important figures in the English-speaking theater. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found The Merry Heart "remarkable for its continued freshness and invention," concluding that the work "has real wisdom from a witty, deeply humane man." Peter Marks declared that Happy Alchemy "in thoroughly entertaining fashion acquaints us with Davies's expansive erudition and gift for rendering literary and historical complexities in simple, human terms." In the New York Times Book Review, Diane Cole praised Happy Alchemy for "the ease with which Davies routinely transformed his sometimes erudite passions into delightful entertainments."

Davies was not always a politically correct writer, as he himself acknowledged, but "In his probing for the spiritual and his desire to be a decent man," noted Michael Peterman in his Robertson Davies, "he insisted on finding new means of expression appropriate to his growth, experience, and maturity." Critics in his homeland and abroad view Davies's work as a major addition to the Canadian literary canon seems assured. The author once commented on his particular affinity for Canada in a piece for Maclean's. "A lot of people complain that my novels aren't about Canada," he said. "I think they are, because I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears, and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker. This makes for tension, and tension is the very stuff of art, plays, novels, the whole lot."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Anthony, Geraldine, editor, Stage Voices: Twelve Canadian Playwrights Talk about Their Lives and Work, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1978.

Bestsellers '89, issue 2, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Buitenhuis, Elspeth, Robertson Davies, Forum House Publishing (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1972.

Cameron, Donald, Conversations with Canadian Novelists, Part 1, Macmillan (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973.

Contemporary Dramatists, 4th edition, St. James (Chicago, IL), 1988.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 2, 1974, Volume 7, 1977, Volume 13, 1980, Volume 25, 1983, Volume 42, 1987, Volume 75, 1993.

Contemporary Novelists, 5th edition, St. James (Detroit, MI), 1991.

Davis, J. Madison, editor, Conversations with Robertson Davies, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1989.

Diamond-Nigh, Lynne, Robertson Davies: Life, Work, and Criticism, York Press, 1997.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 68: Canadian Writers, 1920–1959, First Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Dooley, D. J., Moral Vision in the Canadian Novel, Irwin, 1978.

Grant, Judith Skelton, Robertson Davies, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1978.

Grant, Judith Skelton, Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, Penguin (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Heath, Jeffrey M., editor, Profiles in Canadian Literature No. 2, Dundum Press, 1980.

Jones, Joseph, and Johanna Jones, Canadian Fiction, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1981.

King, Bruce, The New English Literatures: Cultural Nationalism in a Changing World, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1980.

Kirkwood, Hilda, Between the Lines, Oberon Press (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Klinck, Carl F., editor, Literary History of Canada, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2nd edition, 1976.

Lawrence, Robert G., and Samuel L. Macey, editors, Studies in Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, English Literary Studies, University of Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), 1980.

Lecker, David, and Ellen Luigley, editors, Canadian Writers and Their Works, Volume 6, ECW Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

Lecker, Robert, and Jack David, editors, The Annotated Bibliography of Canada's Major Authors, Volume 3, ECW Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1982.

Little, Dave, Catching the Wind in a Net: The Religious Vision of Robertson Davies, ECW) Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.

Monk, Patricia, The Smaller Infinity: The Jungian Self in the Novels of Robertson Davies, University of Toronto Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1982.

Moore, Mavor, Four Canadian Playwrights, Holt (New York, NY), 1973.

Morley, Patricia, Robertson Davies, Gage Educational Publishing (Agincourt, Ontario, Canada), 1977.

Moss, John, Sex and Violence in the Canadian Novel: The Ancestral Present, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977.

Moss, John, editor, Heart and Now 1, NC Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1979.

New, William H., editor, Dramatists in Canada: Selected Essays, University of British Columbia Press, 1972.

Peterman, Michael, Robertson Davies, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1986.

Stone-Blackburn, Susan, Robertson Davies: Playwright, University of British Columbia Press, 1985.

Stouck, David, Major Canadian Authors: A Critical Introduction, University of Nebraska Press (Omaha, NE), 1984.

Sutherland, Ronald, The New Hero: Essays in Comparative Quebec/Canadian Literature, Macmillan (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1977.

Twigg, Alan, For Openers: Conversations with Twenty-four Canadian Writers, Harbour Publishing (Madiera Park, British Columbia, Canada), 1981.

Wyatt, David, Prodigal Sons: A Study in Authorship and Authority, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1980.

PERIODICALS

Acta Victoriana, Volume 97, number 2, 1973.

America, December 16, 1972.

American Spectator, May, 1989.

Ariel, July, 1979.

Atlantic, June, 1993.

Bloomsbury Review, May-June, 1996.

Book Forum, Volume 4, number 1, 1978.

Booklist, July, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of The Merry Heart, p. 1791; July, 1998, Jack Helbig, review of Happy Alchemy, p. 1849; January 1, 2000, Gilbert Taylor, review of For Your Eye Alone: The Letters of Robertson Davies, p. 900.

Books in Canada, November, 1985; August, 1988; February, 1996, p. 2.

Book World, December 13, 1970.

Canadian Drama, Volume 7, number 2, 1981 (special Davies issue).

Canadian Forum, June, 1950; December, 1975; October, 1977; December-January, 1981–82; February-March, 1989; November, 1991.

Canadian Literature, spring, 1960; winter, 1961; winter, 1967; spring, 1973; winter, 1974; winter, 1976; spring, 1982; winter, 1986.

Canadian Review, fall, 1976.

Chicago Tribune, July 26, 1986.

Chicago Tribune Book World, January 31, 1982.

Christian Century, February 1, 1989; January 29, 1992.

Christian Science Monitor, July 14, 1986.

Commonweal, December 20, 1985.

Dalhousie Review, autumn, 1981; fall, 1986.

Design for Arts in Education, May-June, 1989.

Detroit Free Press, January 22, 1989; February 6, 1989.

Economist, June 30, 1990.

English Studies in Canada, March, 1986; March, 1990.

Essays on Canadian Writing, spring, 1977; winter 1977–1978; winter, 1984–1985; spring, 1987; fall, 1989.

Financial Post, January 19, 1963.

Globe & Mail (Toronto), March 5, 1977; January 7, 1984; September 10, 1988; September 17, 1988.

Insight on the News, September 17, 1990.

Interview, March, 1989.

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Journal of Canadian Studies, November, 1974; February, 1977 (special Davies issue).

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Listener, April 15, 1971.

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Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1982.

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New Statesman, April 20, 1973; April 4, 1980; October 14, 1988; November 22, 1991.

Newsweek, January 18, 1971; March 22, 1976; February 8, 1982.

New Yorker, January 27, 1986; February 10, 1992.

New York Review of Books, February 8, 1973; February 27, 1986; April 13, 1989.

New York Times, February 8, 1982; November 6, 1985; December 28, 1988; December 29, 1988; August 7, 1998, Peter Marks, "At the Theater with a Compulsive Companion," p. E40.

New York Times Book Review, December 20, 1970; November 19, 1972; April 25, 1976; February 14, 1982; December 15, 1985; October 30, 1988; January 8, 1989; November 17, 1991; December 1, 1991; February 5, 1995, Isabel Colgate, "Mind, Body and Dr. Hullah," pp. 1, 23, 24; July 26, 1998, Diane Cole, review of Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and Theatre; March 4, 2001, Diane Cole, review of For Your Eye Alone.

Observer (London, England), May 31, 1987; October 2, 1988.

Performing Arts & Entertainment, summer, 1992.

Publishers Weekly, October 14, 1988; February 2, 1990; September 6, 1991; January 25, 1993; May 19, 1997, review of The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading and Writing and the World of Books, p. 56.

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Quill & Quire, August, 1988; September, 1994, pp. 1, 59, 62, 64.

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San Francisco Review of Books, spring, 1987.

Saturday Night, April 26, 1947; December 13, 1947; February 14, 1953; November, 1967; October, 1985; December, 1987; August, 1988; October, 1988; November, 1990; October, 1991; October, 1994, p. 58.

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Spectator, August 21, 1982; October 8, 1988.

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Tamarack Review, autumn, 1958.

Time, January 11, 1971; May 17, 1976; December 26, 1988; March 13, 1995, pp. 100-101.

Time (Canada), November 3, 1975.

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