Robertson Davies :: Biography Biographies Essays

Robertson DaviesWith a vision that reflects the experiences of Canadians, Robertson Davies achieved international renown as unmatchable of Canadas foremost men of letters. Born in Thamesville, Ontario, on dread 28, 1813, Robertson Davies was the youngest of three sons of newspaper publisher and Liberal senator William Rupert Davies and his wife, Florence Sheppard McKay Davies. With parents who were sign of the zodiac enthusiasts, Robertson Davies was drawn to the household early in his life and acted in school plays. At the eld of five, Davies family moved to the small town of Renfrew in the Ottawa Valley when he was twelve, Davies moved to the city of Kingston, where his father owned the local newspaper, the Whig-Standard. From 1928 to 1932, Robertson Davies attended Torontos Upper Canada College the Colborne College of his novels Fifth Business, The Manticore, and Whats Bred in the Bone. Truly, these Ontarian towns shaped the geographical punk of Davies fictional works. At t he Upper Canada College, young Davies was immersed in school theatre of operations and was the editor of the school paper.Admitted to faerys University in Kingston as a special student because he was hopeless in mathematics, Robertson Davies excelled at the university from 1932 to 1935. He was active in the Drama Guild at Queens and continued to be involved in the student theatre at Balliol College in Oxford. Here, he received his B.Litt. in 1938 for a dissertation he print the following year, entitled Shakespeares Boy Actors. Upon graduation, Davies joined the prestigious Old Vic Theatre Company in London, where he marry its stage manager, his life-long wife Brenda. In 1940, Robertson Davies and his wife returned to Canada, where Davies became literary editor of Saturday Live, indeed a weekly review of politics, finance, and the arts. The first of his three daughters was born that December. In 1942, Davies became editor of the Peterborough Examiner another of his fathers pap ers and he was to hold this post for the next twenty years. Davies became an increasingly popular columnist, Samuel Marchbanks, whose witty comments and humorous accounts of small-town American and Canadian life would later be published in three volumes between 1947 and 1967.From 1955 to 1965, Davies was the publisher of Examiner. By this time, he had already written eighteen books, numerous plays, and produced many articles for various journals. His first play, physical attraction at Breakfast won the 1948 Dominion Drama Festival plunder for best Canadian play.