Robertson Davies :: Biography Biographies Essays

Robertson DaviesWith a vision that reflects the experiences of Canadians, Robertson Davies achieved international renown as one of Canadas foremost men of letters. Born in Thamesville, Ontario, on August 28, 1813, Robertson Davies was the youngest of common chord sons of newspaper publisher and Liberal senator William Rupert Davies and his wife, Florence Sheppard McKay Davies. With parents who were theatre enthusiasts, Robertson Davies was drawn to the theatre first in his life and acted in school plays. At the age of five, Davies family travel to the small town of Renfrew in the Ottawa Valley when he was twelve, Davies travel to the city of Kingston, where his father owned the local newspaper, the Whig-Standard. From 1928 to 1932, Robertson Davies attended Torontos stop number 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 heart of Davies sham works. At the Upper Ca nada College, young Davies was immersed in school dramatics and was the editor program program of the school paper.Admitted to Queens 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 thesis he published the following year, entitled Shakespeares Boy Actors. Upon graduation, Davies joined the esteemed Old Vic Theatre Company in London, where he married its period manager, his life-long wife Brenda. In 1940, Robertson Davies and his wife returned to Canada, where Davies became literary editor of Saturday Live, then 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 papers and he was to comport this post for the next twenty years. Davies became an increasingly popular columnist, Samuel Marchbanks, whose witty comments and Gilbertian 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 pen eighteen books, numerous plays, and produced many articles for various journals. His first play, Eros at Breakfast won the 1948 Dominion Drama Festival Award for outdo Canadian play.