Most Popular Books by Robertson Davies

The second book in Robertson Davies''s acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. The Manticore—the second book in the series after Fifth Business—follows David Staunton, a man pleased with his success but haunted by his relationship with his larger-than-life father. As he seeks help through therapy, he encounters a wonderful cast of characters who help connect him to his past and the death of his father. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

“A splendid gallimaufry of the eminent Canadian’s talks and essays, mostly about literature and the creative life . . . a thought-filled and amusing book.”—The Washington Post For devotees of Davies and all lovers of literature and language, here is the “urbanity, wit, and high seriousness mixed by a master chef,” vintage delights from an exquisite literary menu (Cleveland Plain Dealer). Robertson Davies’s rich and varied collection of writings on the world of books and the miracle of language captures his inimitable voice and sustains his presence among us. Coming almost entirely from Davies’s own files of unpublished material, these twenty-four essays and lectures range over themes from “The Novelist and Magic” to “Literature and Technology,” from “Painting, Fiction, and Faking,” to “Can a Doctor Be a Humanist?” and “Creativity in Old Age.” Davies himself says merely: “Lucky writers . . . like wine, die rich in fruitiness and delicious aftertaste, so that their works survive them.” “Splendid—wise, witty, wide-ranging.”—The New York Times Book Review “Some of Davies’s ideas are iconoclastic, and will delight those who share them while stimulating those who do not. All his judgments are interesting, steeped in humanism, and most elegantly put.”—The Atlantic Monthly “The inimitable novelist gives an exuberant posthumous performance in this eclectic collection of (mostly) previously unpublished addresses, talks, and incidental pieces . . . Davies diffuses his opinions entertainingly, if occasionally superficially, but never loses his audience.”—Kirkus Reviews

The third book in Robertson Davies''s acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven. World of Wonders—the third book in the series after The Manticore—follows the story of Magnus Eisengrim—the most illustrious magician of his age—who is spirited away from his home by a member of a traveling sideshow, the Wanless World of Wonders. After honing his skills and becoming better known, Magnus unfurls his life’s courageous and adventurous tale in this third and final volume of a spectacular, soaring work. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Conversations with Robertson Davies is a long overdue anthology of interviews with Canada''s most respected literary figure. Journalist, essayist, reviewer, playwright, and novelist, Robertson Davies has not only been a leading figure in Canadian literature since World War II, but, since the publication of Fifth Business in 1970, he has become known throughout the world. Conversations with Robertson Davies will be of interest both to the student of Canadian literature and culture and to the scholar examining Davies''s plays and novels as well as to the general reader who would like to know more about the awesome man behind the Salterton and Deptford trilogies, What''s Bred in the Bone, and The Lyre of Orpheus. A majority of this anthology of twenty-eight interviews has never before appeared in print. Along with these previously unpublished interviews, the reader finds a selection of the best print interviews: Tom Harpur of the Toronto Star proves Davies''s spiritual beliefs, Ann Saddlemyer looks into his dreams, and author Terence M. Green questions Davies on the supernatural.

The first book in Robertson Davies''s acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man''s land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In this perceptive and entertaining memoir of a doctor’s life, we encounter at least one miraculous cure, a bad breath contest of Olympian standards, tales of cannibals and Tsarist bordellos, medical solutions to literary mysteries—and startling insights into the secrets of a doctor’s consulting room.

This is a collection of Davies''s popular non-fiction writing, with reviews, opinions and observations on people and books alike.

Francis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis''s life were not always what they seemed. In this wonderfully ingenious portrait of an art expert and collector of international renown, Robertson Davies has created a spellbinding tale of artistic triumph and heroic deceit. In this second book of the Cornish Trilogy, Davies spins a tale told in stylish, elegant prose, endowed with lavish portions of his wit and wisdom. "A deliciously readable story...An altogether remarkable creation, his most accomplished novel to date." -- The New York Times

A collection of speeches on literature, academia, and more by the “extremely entertaining novelist and public speaker” (The Washington Post). These public addresses by the acclaimed Canadian man of letters and New York Times-bestselling author Robertson Davies provides portraits of literary personalities, advice on writers and writing, and comments on academia and the modern world. Whether giving advice to schoolgirls, discussing the Age of Aquarius as seen by alchemists, exploring Jungian psychology in the theater and insanity in literature, or telling us how to design a haunted house, Davies brings to all his subjects the same intensity and marvelous craftsmanship that are the hallmarks of his fictional creations.

A collection of essays “filled with pleasantly rambling opinions about everything from self-help books to erotica” from the celebrated Canadian author (The Chronicle Journal). An urbane, robust, and wonderfully opinionated voice from Canada, sometimes called “America’s attic,” speaks here of the delights of reading, and of what mass education has done to readers today, to taste, to books, to culture. With his usual wit and breadth of vision, Robertson Davies ranges through the world of letters—books renowned and obscure, old and recent; English, Irish, Canadian, and American writers both forgotten and fondly remembered. “Sweet reason in the raiment of well-woven prose? Most assuredly. Good humor agraze over broad literary demesnes? No doubt of it. Forgotten popular favorites rescued and rehabilitated? Certainly. A parade of agreeable prejudices? He would not be a true Canadian if he did not have them. Lightheartedness where needed? Yes. Seriousness where it counts? Yes. Wit, satirical touches, firm indignations, sound sense, good taste, judiciousness, cosmopolitan breadth of view, urbanity, sanity, unexpected eccentricities, educated humanism? By all means. It is indeed by all these means and more that this book of essays and observations bestows its multiple benefactions, and anyone picking it up is bound north to pleasure and profit.”—The New York Times

The death of eccentric art patron and collector Francis Cornish leads to a spectacle of theft, perjury, murder, scholarship, and love at a Canadian university.

Anthony Burgess listed Davies'' The Rebel Angels among the 99 best novels of our time and declared that Davies himself is "without doubt Nobel Prize material". In this unusual novel, Davies'' protagonist is murdered in the first sentence of the book, but he lingers as a ghost to view the exploits of his ancestors, from the American Revolution to the present.

Robertson Davies (1913-1995) had a remarkable literary career that extended through the entire second half of the 20th century. Chronicling his time as editor of the Peterborough Examiner, his role as the founding master of Massey College and most of all his life as a writer - from the failure of a play in New York to the beginnings of an idea for a novel that would become Fifth Business (1970) - A Celtic Temperament is entertaining and illuminating and a major addition to Davies'' body of work.

The Foundation, looking for a worthy undertaking upon which to expend its considerable monies, decides to fund the doctoral work of Hulda Schnakenburg, an extraordinarily talented music student. Her task is to complete the score of an unfinished opera.

Fifth business: A retiring Canadian history professor reveals the true nature of his eerie, mystical influence on those around him

The Happy Alchemy in this delightful book blends witty entertainment with thought-provoking instruction. Touching on everything from Shakespeare’s Falstaff to Canada’s constitutional wrangles (“our own version of a civil war”) and from “How I Write a Book” to Richard Wagner, “that extraordinary genius and dreadful crook,” this is in every way a worthy companion to The Merry Heart. This book also draws on the polished but unpublished speeches, book reviews, and other articles that Robertson Davies left behind. Here, too, the book’s editors, Jennifer Surridge and Brenda Davies, have produced tantalizing quotes from his private diaries to help introduce each of the book’s thirty-three pieces of prose (and verse, libretto, and even screenplay). Most of the pieces deal with the theatre – from the day-long ancient Greek drama festivals “with an audience of 17,000 Athenians looking on,” through Shakespeare’s theatre and on to Davies’ own youthful “Prologue to The Good Natur’d Man” (accepted at the Old Vic as pure Oliver Goldsmith), to his beloved nineteenth-century theatre and melodrama. Since, in his words, “melodrama lives in our opera houses,” it is a short step from there to his passion for opera and from Verdi to the surprising confessions of “My Musical Career.” Many readers will be astonished by his knowledgeable enthusiasm for folk-song; few by his acknowledgement of his great debt to C.G. Jung in his work. At the end of this stimulating and revealing book he returns to his love of the theatre and his admiration for the great playwrights, summed up in his haunting final line “…and I applaud them across the centuries.” Across the years the distinctive, absolutely unmistakable voice of Robertson Davies will continue to ring out from these pages.

Robertson Davies, one of the twentieth century''s most distinguished authors, brought his characteristic great sense of style to everything he wrote. Whether it was a letter to his daughter or a formal letter to the editor disemboweling a hostile review, he wrote with care, zest, and in a distinctive voice. Penned during the height of his fame-between the years 1976 and 1995-these letters were sent to a wide range of recipients, from Sir John Gielgud to Margaret Atwood, from publishers to fans and critics of his writings. The letters are frequently testy, tart, and not always "politically correct"; but whether they are funny, moving, or thought provoking, they provide a rare glimpse of the private Davies, as r evealed in his own words.

An Ottawa civil servants royal connection and a letter to the editor are the themes from two of Davies best plays.

Two plays from the 1940s by the most important Canadian playwright of the postwar period.

Murdered by his wife''s lover, Gil must spend his afterlife seated next to his murderer at a film festival, where he views the exploits of his ancestors from the Revolutionary era to his parents'' time

Out of spite, someone puts a false engagement notice in the local newspaper causing all parties great embarrassment.

Robertson Davies gave many speeches over the years, and one of his favourite topics at these events was reading. The greater part of this collection is speeches, made throughout his life; also included are essays, ghost stories, and a children''s short story.

Eighteen spooky ghost stories from the acclaimed author of "Fifth Business" are now gathered in one haunting collection. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

If Hamlet was right, and the theatre does hold the mirror up to nature, what kind of nature did a play such as The Vampyre reflect in its glass? And what relation does it bear to the generally accepted master works of the nineteenth-century stage, the plays of Ibsen and Shaw, for example? In this book Robertson Davies explores in loving detail the world of nineteenth-century melodrama - the plays, the actors, and the theatres themselves - to find the answers to these and other questions. It is the distillation of a lifetime''s experience as audience, actor, teacher, and reader, and Davies shares with us this experience and the delights inherent in it. Explore with him the world of William the simple tailor and his black-eyed Susan; and of innumerable Millers'' Daughters, all with fatal attraction, no power of resistance, and uncommon fecundity. Discover the nature and causes of Heroine''s Disease. Watch for the Melancholy Man with his discreditable secret. And in the process learn a new or renew an old pleasure in the nineteenth-century stage.

Contents: Tempest Tost, A Mixture of Frailties, Leaven of Malice.

amateur production of The Tempest provides a colourful backdrop for an hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare''s play, falls in love with the beautiful Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows that she has plans of her own, Hector despairs and tries to commit suicide on the play''s opening night.

Fifth Business, which one critic said was "as masterfully executed as anything in the history of the novel," might be described simply as the life of a schoolteacher named Dunstan Ramsay. But such description would not even suggest the dark currents of love, ambition, vengeance, and death that flow through this powerful work, cast in the form of Ramsay''s memoirs. Fifth Business is the first novel in the celebrated Deptford Trilogy, which also includes The Manticore and World of Wonders--it also stands alone as the story of a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real.

Comprising The diary, The table talk and A garland of miscellanea by Samuel Marchbanks, but enlarged to include a biographical introduction and copious notes calculated to remove all difficulties caused by the passing of time, and to offer the wisdom, not to speak of the whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the modern public, by his long-suffering friend.