biography
| name: |
Davies, (William) Robertson
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1913–95)
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| biography:
| Writer, playwright, essayist, and critic, born in Thamesville, Ontario, SE Canada. He studied in Canada and at Balliol College, Oxford, worked as a teacher, actor, and journalist, was editor of the Peterborough Examiner (1942–63), and became professor of English at the University of Toronto (1960–81). His reputation as one of Canada's foremost writers rests on three trilogies: the ‘Salterton Trilogy’, comprising Tempest-Tost (1951), Leaven of Malice (1954), and A Mixture of Frailties (1958); the ‘Deptford Trilogy’, comprising Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975); and the ‘Cornish Trilogy’, comprising The Rebel Angels (1981), What's Bred in the Bone (1985, Booker shortlist), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988). His plays included Fortune My Foe (1948), Love and Libel (1960), and Pontiac and the Green Man (1977). His writing satirizes bourgeois provincialism, and combines humour, fantasy, religion, astrology, and Jungian theory. |
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