Murther and Walking Spirits

Novelist, playwright, and journalist, Robertson Davies is one of Canada's best-known writers internationally. He grew up in Kingston, Ontario, where he later attended Queen's University. In 1938, he received a B.Litt. from Oxford, and then joined the Old Vic Theatre Company. Returning to Canada in 1940, he served as editor of the influential publication Saturday Night until 1942. For the next 20 years he was editor of the Peterborough Examiner in Ontario, where he wrote the Samuel Marchbanks Sketches. From 1953 to 1971 he served on the board of the Stratford Festival. In 1963 Davies became the first master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto. In the 1970s Davies published the Deptford Trilogy - Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975). Beginning in 1981, Davies published the Cornish Trilogy - The Rebel Angels (1981), What's Bred in the Bone (1985), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988). These novels, with their academic setting, reveal Davies's awareness of Canada's intellectual and artistic sophistication.