Early life Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, the third son of
William Rupert Davies and Florence Sheppard McKay. Growing up, Davies was surrounded by books and lively language. His father, a member of the
Canadian Senate from 1942 to his death in 1967, was a newspaperman from
Welshpool,
Wales; both of Davies's parents were voracious readers. He followed in their footsteps and read everything he could. He also participated in theatrical productions as a child, where he developed a lifelong interest in drama. He spent his formative years in
Renfrew, Ontario (and renamed it as "Blairlogie", in his novel ''What's Bred in the Bone''); many of the novel's characters are named after families he knew there. He attended
Upper Canada College in Toronto from 1926 to 1932 and while there attended services at the
Church of St. Mary Magdalene. He would later leave the
Presbyterian Church and join
Anglicanism over objections to
Calvinist theology. Davies later used his experience of the ceremonial of High Mass at St. Mary Magdalene's in his novel
The Cunning Man. After Upper Canada College, Davies studied at
Queen's University at
Kingston, Ontario, from 1932 until 1935. According to the ''
Queen's University Journal'', Davies enrolled as a special student not working towards a degree, because he was unable to pass the mathematics component of Queen's entrance exam. Davies's early life provided him with themes and material to which he would often return in his later work; these include the theme of Canadians returning to England to finish their education, and the theatre.
Middle years Davies and his new bride returned to Canada in 1940, where he took the position of literary
editor at
Saturday Night magazine. Two years later, he became editor of the
Peterborough Examiner in the small city of
Peterborough, Ontario, northeast of Toronto. Again he was able to mine his experiences here for many of the characters and situations which later appeared in his plays and novels.
Eros at Breakfast was followed by
Fortune, My Foe in 1949 and ''At My Heart's Core
, a three-act play, in 1950. Meanwhile, Davies was writing humorous essays in the Examiner
under the pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks. Some of these were collected and published in The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947), The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949), and later in Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack (1967). An omnibus edition of the three Marchbanks books, with new notes by the author, was published under the title The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks'' in 1985. During the 1950s, Davies played a major role in launching the
Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada. He served on the Festival's board of governors, and collaborated with the Festival's director, Sir
Tyrone Guthrie, in publishing three books about the Festival's early years. Although his first love was drama and he had achieved some success with his occasional humorous essays, Davies found his greatest success in fiction. His first three novels, which later became known as
The Salterton Trilogy, were
Tempest-Tost (1951, originally conceived as a play),
Leaven of Malice (1954, also the basis of the unsuccessful play
Love and Libel) which won the
Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and
A Mixture of Frailties (1958).
1960s In 1960, Davies joined
Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he would teach literature until 1981. The following year he published a collection of essays on literature,
A Voice From the Attic, and was awarded the
Lorne Pierce Medal for his literary achievements. These stories were later collected in the book
High Spirits (1982). and
World of Wonders (1975). Together these three books came to be known as
The Deptford Trilogy.
1980s and 1990s When Davies retired from his position at the university, his seventh novel, a satire of academic life,
The Rebel Angels (1981), was published. The novel was followed by ''
What's Bred in the Bone'' (1985) which was short-listed for the
Booker Prize for fiction in 1986. In its obituary,
The Times wrote: "Davies encompassed all the great elements of life ... His novels combined deep seriousness and psychological inquiry with fantasy and exuberant mirth." He remained close friends with
John Kenneth Galbraith, attending Galbraith's eighty-fifth birthday party in
Boston in 1993; the author became so close a friend and colleague of the American novelist
John Irving that Irving gave one of the scripture readings at Davies's funeral in the chapel of
Trinity College, Toronto. He also wrote in support of
Salman Rushdie when the latter was threatened by a
fatwā from
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in reaction to supposed anti-Islam expression in his novel
The Satanic Verses. ==Personal life==