Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies (William Robertson Davies) 28 August 1913 – 2 December 1995, was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. One of Canada’s best-known authors, he was also a celebrated “man of letters” and the founding Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto.
He was born in Thamesville, Ontario, the third son of William Rupert Davies, a Canadian senator, and Florence Sheppard McKay. Surrounded by books and language, Davies developed a lifelong love of drama. He spent his childhood in Renfrew, Ontario, a place he later fictionalized as Blairlogie in his novel The Cunning Man. He attended Upper Canada College (1926–1932), then Queen’s University (1932–1935) as a special student, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a BLitt in 1938. He wrote Shakespeare’s Boy Actors as his thesis in 1939 and briefly pursued acting with the Old Vic Repertory Company in London.
In 1940 he married Brenda Mathews; the couple returned to Canada the same year. Davies became literary editor at Saturday Night, then editor of the Peterborough Examiner (1942–1955) and later its publisher (1955–1965). He and his family owned several media outlets, including the Kingston Whig-Standard and CHEX/CKWS.
Davies wrote plays, essays, and humorous sketches under the pen name Samuel Marchbanks, published in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947) and The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949), among others. His stage work earned early praise; Eros at Breakfast was named the best Canadian play of 1948. He helped launch Canada’s Stratford Festival in the 1950s and wrote about its early years.
His fiction brought him lasting fame. The Salterton Trilogy includes Tempest-Tost (1951), Leaven of Malice (1954; winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour), and A Mixture of Frailties (1958). In 1960 he joined the University of Toronto’s Trinity College to teach literature, remaining there until 1981, and in 1963 became the Master of Massey College.
Davies and his novels drew on Jungian psychology and a love of myth and small-town life. The Deptford Trilogy—comprising Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975)—became his most celebrated work. The Rebel Angels (1981) followed, then What’s Bred in the Bone (1985), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1986. The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) began The Cornish Trilogy, followed by Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994). A planned Toronto Trilogy was in progress when he died.
Davies also wrote the libretto for Randolph Peters’ opera The Golden Ass, performed by the Canadian Opera Company in 1999. The Times obituary praised him for blending seriousness with fantasy and humor. He maintained close friendships with John Kenneth Galbraith and John Irving, who spoke at his funeral, and he supported Salman Rushdie during the fatwa controversy.
Davies and Brenda had three daughters, Miranda, Rosamond, and Jennifer, and he had four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He never learned to drive, and Brenda often drove him to events. In 1990 he delivered the Erasmus Lecture, “Literature and Moral Purpose,” arguing that serious fiction helps shape moral understanding. Robertson Davies died on 2 December 1995 in Orangeville, Ontario, at the age of 82.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:23 (CET).