Robertson Davies: A Portrait in Mosaic
- ISBN-10
- 1551992116
- ISBN-13
- 9781551992112
- Series
- Robertson Davies
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 400
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-02-24
- Publisher
- Douglas Gibson Books
- Author
- Val Ross
Description
National bestseller and a Globe and Mail Best Book A fascinating, larger-than-life character, Davies left a treasure trove of stories about him when he died in 1995 — expertly arranged here into a revealing portrait. From his student days onward, Robertson Davies made a huge impression on those around him. He was so clearly bound for a glorious future that some young friends even carefully preserved his letters. And everyone remembered their encounters with him. Later in life, as a world-famous writer, perhaps Canada’s pre-eminent man of letters (who “looked like Jehovah”), he attracted people eager to meet him, who also vividly remembered their meetings. So when Val Ross set out in search of people’s memories, she was faced with a wonderful embarrassment of riches. The one hundred or so contributors here range very widely. There are family memories, of course, and memories from colleagues in the academic world who knew him as a professor and the founding master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. Predictably, there are other major writers like Margaret Atwood and John Irving. Less predictably, there are people from the world of Hollywood, such as Norman Jewison and David Cronenberg (who remembers Davies on-set, peering through a camera lens as he researched his newest novel). And we even hear from his barber, and from his gardener, Theo Henkenhaf. Some speakers contribute just a lively paragraph; others several pages. Yet all of them, through the magic of Val Ross’s art, help to create an intriguing, full-colour portrait of a complex man beloved by millions of readers around the world.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Conversations with Robertson Davies
By Robertson DaviesInterviews with the Canadian novelist, playwright, and critic share his views on his career, literature, religions, current issues, and his approach to writing
-
The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies
By Robertson DaviesFirst published in the U.S. last year, this updated collection contains the best of Robertson Davies' newspaper and magazine articles written over the past 50 years. "Each piece is entertaining and enlightening. . . ".--Publishers Weekly.
-
The Rebel Angels
By Robertson Davies, defrocked monks, mad professors, and wealthy eccentrics-a remarkable cast peoples Robertson Davies' brilliant spectacle of theft, perjury, murder, scholarship, and love at a modern university.
-
One Half of Robertson Davies
By Robertson DaviesThe only secret is when it will be finished. Yet another household convenience made familiar to us in historical novels is the oubliette. The works of Dumas are full of oubliettes. In its simplest terms, an oubliette is ...
-
World of Wonders
By Robertson DaviesThe 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, ...
-
The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies
By Robertson DaviesPresents a collection of the best of Davies newspaper and magazine articles on wide ranging topics.
-
Aspects of Robertson Davies' Novels
By Victor J. LamsAspects of Robertson Davies' Novels discusses the author's Salterton and Deptford trilogies along with Davies' last two novels, Murther & Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man.
-
The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books
By Robertson DaviesS. adly, we will never see an autobiography by Robertson Davies, although the fragments that exist show that the world has ... roles in The Cunning Man – Brochwel Gilmartin, Charles Iredale, and Jonathan Hullah – met and became friends.
-
Manticore
By Robertson DaviesThe second novel in Robertson Davies’ critically acclaimed Deptford Trilogy, The Manticore is a fascinating exploration, by an exquisite stylist, of those regions beyond reason where monsters live.
-
High Spirits
By Robertson DaviesA collection of eighteen stories about ghosts and other haunting tales of the supernatural.