The Deptford Trilogy

Robertson Davies

Contents (29)

The Deptford Trilogy

ROBERTSON DAVIES (1913–1995) was born and raised in Ontario, and educated at a variety of schools, including Upper Canada College, Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He had three successive careers: as an actor with the Old Vic Company in England, as publisher of the Peterborough Examiner, and as a university professor and first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, from which he retired in 1981 with the title of Master Emeritus.

He was one of Canada’s most distinguished men of letters, with several volumes of plays and collections of essays, speeches, and belles lettres to his credit. As a novelist, he gained worldwide fame for his three trilogies, The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy, and The Cornish Trilogy, and for later novels Murther & Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man.

His career was marked by many honours: He was the first Canadian to be made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada, and he received honorary degrees from twenty-six American, Canadian, and British universities.

By Robertson Davies

NOVELS

THE SALTERTON TRILOGY

Tempest-Tost

Leaven of Malice

A Mixture of Frailties

THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY

Fifth Business

The Manticore

World of Wonders

THE CORNISH TRILOGY

The Rebel Angels

What’s Bred in the Bone

The Lyre of Orpheus

Murther & Walking Spirits

The Cunning Man

SHORT FICTION

High Spirits

FICTIONAL ESSAYS

The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks

Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack

The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks

ESSAYS

One Half of Robertson Davies

The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies

The Merry Heart

Happy Alchemy

Selected Works on the Art of Writing

Selected Works on the Pleasures of Reading

CRITICISM

A Voice from the Attic

PLAYS

Selected Plays

THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY

Robertson Davies

The Deptford Trilogy

New Canadian Library e-Omnibus, 2015

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Fifth Business

First published in Canada and Great Britain by Macmillan in 1970

First published in the U.S. by Viking in 1970

e-ISBN: 9780771027772

The Manticore

First published in Canada and Great Britain by Macmillan in 1972

First published in the U.S. by Viking in 1972

e-ISBN: 9780771029868

World of Wonders

First published in Canada by Macmillan in 1975

First published in the U.S. by Viking in 1975

First published in Great Britain by W.H. Allen in 1975

e-ISBN: 9780771029875

E-omnibus edition published in Canada by New Canadian Library, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company, Toronto, in 2015.