William robertson davies biography for kids

Canadian novelist

William Robertson DaviesCC OOnt FRSL FRSC (28 Honorable 1913 – 2 December 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, announcer, and professor. He was one marketplace Canada's best known and most public authors and one of its well-nigh distinguished "men of letters", a appellation Davies gladly accepted for himself.^[1] Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college allied with the University of Toronto.

Biography

Early life

Davies was born in Thamesville, Lake, the third son of William Prince Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay.^[2] Ant up, Davies was surrounded by books and lively language. His father, shipshape and bristol fashion member of the Canadian Senate let alone 1942 to his death in 1967, was a newspaperman from Welshpool, Cambria, and both parents were voracious readers. He followed in their footsteps discipline read everything he could. He as well participated in theatrical productions as unadulterated child, where he developed a for all one`s life interest in drama.

He spent top formative years in Renfrew, Ontario (and renamed it as "Blairlogie", in climax novel What's Bred in the Bone); many of the novel's characters rush named after families he knew here. He attended Upper Canada College foresee Toronto from 1926 to 1932 settle down while there attended services at rendering Church of St. Mary Magdalene.^[3] Fair enough would later leave the Presbyterian Cathedral and join Anglicanism over objections generate Calvinist theology. Davies later used circlet experience of the ceremonial of Big Mass at St. Mary Magdalene's critical his novel The Cunning Man.

After Upper Canada College, he studied squabble Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, outsider 1932 until 1935. According to rendering Queen's University Journal Davies enrolled monkey a special student not working for a degree, because he was powerless to pass the mathematics component garbage Queen's entrance exam.^[4] At Queen's significant wrote for the student paper, The Queen's Journal, where he wrote splendid literary column. He left Canada nip in the bud study at Balliol College, Oxford, ring he received a BLitt degree amplify 1938. The next year he publicised his thesis, Shakespeare's Boy Actors, direct embarked on an acting career skin London. In 1940, he played slender roles and did literary work dilemma the director at the Old Vic Repertory Company in London. Also zigzag year, Davies married Australian Brenda Mathews, whom he had met at City, and who was then working significance stage manager for the theatre.^[2] They spent their honeymoon in the Cattle countryside at Fronfraith Hall, Abermule, Author, the family house owned by Prince Davies.^[5]

Davies's early life provided him fellow worker themes and material to which unwind would often return in his subsequent work, including the theme of Canadians returning to England to finish their education, and the theatre.

Middle years

Davies and his new bride returned allure Canada in 1940, where he took the position of literary editor story Saturday Night magazine. Two years afterward, he became editor of the Peterborough Examiner in the small city virtuous Peterborough, Ontario, northeast of Toronto. Brush up he was able to mine tiara experiences here for many of high-mindedness characters and situations which later attended in his plays and novels.^[2]

Davies, in the lead with family members William Rupert Davies and Arthur Davies, purchased several publicity outlets. Along with the Examiner chronicle, they owned the Kingston Whig-Standard production, CHEX-AM, CKWS-AM, CHEX-TV, and CKWS-TV.

During his tenure as editor of primacy Examiner, which lasted from 1942 profit 1955 (he subsequently served as owner from 1955 to 1965), Davies publicized a total of 18 books, reprimand several of his own plays, pole wrote articles for various journals.^[2] Davies set out his theory of characterization in his Shakespeare for Young Players (1947), and then put theory encouragement practice when he wrote Eros premier Breakfast, a one-act play which was named best Canadian play of rendering year by the 1948 Dominion Screenplay Festival.^[6]

Eros at Breakfast was followed moisten Fortune, My Foe in 1949 ride At My Heart's Core, a three-act play, in 1950. Meanwhile, Davies was writing humorous essays in the Examiner under the pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks. Dreadful of these were collected and publicised in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947), The Table Talk of Prophet Marchbanks (1949), and later in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967). An omnibus version of the three Marchbanks books, fulfil new notes by the author, was published under the title The Credentials of Samuel Marchbanks in 1985.^[7]

During rendering 1950s, Davies played a major part in launching the Stratford Shakespearean Commemoration of Canada. He served on description Festival's board of governors, and collaborated with the Festival's director, Sir Tyrone Guthrie, in publishing three books transport the Festival's early years.^[2][8]

Although his lid love was drama and he difficult achieved some success with his casual humorous essays, Davies found his leading success in fiction. His first triad novels, which later became known bit The Salterton Trilogy, were Tempest-Tost (1951, originally conceived as a play), Leaven of Malice (1954, also the argument of the unsuccessful play Love skull Libel) which won the Stephen Humorist Award for Humour, and A Combination of Frailties (1958).^[7] These novels explored the difficulty of sustaining a racial life in Canada, and life occupation a small-town newspaper, subjects of which Davies had first-hand knowledge. In unadorned 1959 essay on Nabokov's Lolita, powder wrote that she was a dishonest child taking advantage of a anaemic adult.

1960s

In 1960, Davies joined Three-way College at the University of Toronto, where he would teach literature inconclusive 1981. The following year he available a collection of essays on learning, A Voice From the Attic, opinion was awarded the Lorne Pierce Accolade for his literary achievements.^[2]

In 1963, pacify became the Master of Massey Institute, the University of Toronto's new high college.^[2] During his stint as Magician, he initiated a tradition of verbal skill and telling ghost stories at class yearly Christmas celebrations.^[9] These stories were later collected in the book High Spirits (1982).^[7]

1970s

Davies drew on his bring round in Jungian psychology to create Fifth Business (1970), a novel that relies heavily on Davies's own experiences, realm love of myth and magic, humbling his knowledge of small-town mores. Glory narrator, like Davies, is of colonist Canadian background, with a father who runs the town paper. The book's characters act in roles that about correspond to Jungian archetypes according elect Davies's belief in the predominance additional spirit over the things of nobleness world.^[2]

Davies built on the success mislay Fifth Business with two more novels: The Manticore (1972), a novel band largely in the form of put in order Jungian analysis (for which he standard that year's Governor General's Literary Award),^[10] and World of Wonders (1975). Sleeve these three books came to snigger known as The Deptford Trilogy.

1980s and 1990s

When Davies retired from coronate position at the university, his oneseventh novel, a satire of academic walk, The Rebel Angels (1981), was promulgated, followed by What's Bred in picture Bone (1985) which was short-listed assistance the Booker Prize for fiction buy 1986.^[10]The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) gos after these two books in what became known as The Cornish Trilogy.^[7]

During enthrone retirement from academe he continued concern write novels which further established him as a major figure in dignity literary world: Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994).^[7] A third novel in what would have been a further trilogy – the Toronto Trilogy – was train in progress at the time of Davies's death.^[2] He also realized a long-held dream when he penned the record to Randolph Peters' opera: The Blond Ass, based on The Metamorphoses appreciate Lucius Apuleius, just like that deadly by one of the characters sidewalk Davies's 1958 A Mixture of Frailties. The opera was performed by goodness Canadian Opera Company at the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, in April 1999, several years after Davies's death.^[11]

In tog up obituary, The Times wrote: "Davies encompassed all the great elements of life ... His novels combined deep seriousness near psychological inquiry with fantasy and carefree mirth."^[12] He remained close friends exempt John Kenneth Galbraith, attending Galbraith's 85th birthday party in Boston in 1993,^[13] and became so close a contributor and colleague of the American essayist John Irving that Irving gave acquaintance of the scripture readings at Davies's funeral in the chapel of 3 College, Toronto. He also wrote escort support of Salman Rushdie when dignity latter was threatened by a fatwā from AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini of Iran condensation reaction to supposed anti-Islam expression rephrase his novel The Satanic Verses.^[14]

Personal life

Davies was married to Brenda Ethel Davies (1917–2013) in 1940 and survived newborn four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren overrun his three daughters Miranda Davies, Rosamond Bailey and author Jennifer Surridge.^[15][16]

Davies under no circumstances learned to drive.^[17] His wife Brenda routinely drove him to events arm other excursions.

Awards and recognition

Works

References

Further reading

External links