[Gussow is an American journalist, nonfiction writer, and critic. In the following essay, which was based on an interview with Davies, Gussow discusses Davies's career and most recent novel, The Cunning Man.]

That there is a market in these days of tight publishing budgets for a bibliography of works by and on Robertson Davies, a study of his plays, and a collection of his "Pronouncements" is an index of Davies' current popularity. This popularity is based on his second trilogy—Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders—for in these books Davies has created vivid and distinctive central characters whose eccentric interests have both popular appeal and a philosophic und...

In the main, the heroes and heroines of Robertson Davies' novels, the characters through whom he chooses to tell his stories, are scholars. They are also pedants. They have many opinions, whereas scholars in the strict sense have only a few, closely related to their disciplines. In the course of their conversations and meditations. Davies' heroes and heroines express their opinions expansively and with wide-ranging references to history and literature. Furthermore, since the habit of forming o...

[Colegate is an English novelist and critic. In the review below, she praises Davies's handling of character and first-person narration in The Cunning Man.]

[In the following obituary, Flint focuses on Davies's works, noting his concern with themes of morality, evil, myth, love, and death.]

[Bailey is an English-born journalist, nonfiction writer, novelist, and critic. In the review below, he discusses Murther & Walking Spirits, remarking on the unexpected turns in Davies's plot and the protagonist's development.]

Discussions of Davies' first three novels—the so-called Salterton trilogy—tend to emphasize his comic and satiric vision. By contrast, criticism and discussion of the Deptford trilogy—[Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders] …—have focussed on the psychological and religious dimensions of the novels and Davies' substantial debt to the thought of the Swiss analytical psychologist C. G. Jung. Filaments of continuity are evident between the two tril...

[In the following favorable review of Reading and Writing, Fuller praises Davies's various insights into literary creation and appreciation.]

[In the following review, Baker comments favorably on The Cunning Man.]

Davies' work reveals a progressive attempt to define human identity in the fullest possible sense. In the development of his work from Shakespeare's Boy Actors to World of Wonders, he can be seen to examine the possibilities of role-playing, the second self, the autonomous personality of the artist, the Jungian self, the romance hero, and the Magian soul, and to assess each as a possible mythologem of the completed human identity. His exploration of these possibilities is rooted in his deep an...

[In the following essay, which was based on an interview with Davies, Farnsworth presents the novelist's views on Canadian culture and politics.]

[Scheick is an American educator and critic. In the review below, he comments favorably on Murther & Walking Spirits.]

[In the following obituary, Gross and Turner provide an overview of Davies's life and career.]

Included [in One Half of Robertson Davies: Provocative Pronouncements on a Wide Range of Topics] are aspects of Davies' personal life and habits, beliefs and convictions, aims and intentions that had never been made clear through the person of Samuel Marchbanks, characters in the plays and novels, or the author's own published literary criticism. No totally unsuspected Robertson Davies steps out of these pages, however, and to suggest that these pieces weight equally with everything that he ha...

[In the following mixed review of The Cunning Man, Kaveney argues that while Davies may be reactionary in his ideological orientation, he has an "exemplary sense" of how "ordinary people" experience and deal with pity and terror.]

[The] experience of reading One Half of Roberston Davies was enlightening—I was forced to realize how close, how astonishingly close, colossal vanity is to pristine innocence. (p. 24) Of these 22 pieces perhaps five are worth preserving; the others, particularly a "satirical" poem on Hair, not to mention a coy, cute animal story written for children but included here because "several people" assured Davies it was really for adults, might have been tossed away without regre...

Marchbanks' Almanack, recorded once more by Samuel Marchbanks' devoted amanuensis, Robertson Davies, is just as funny, just as witty and just as wise as the Diary and the Table Talk were before. Some readers may find their gorge rising at the names of Marchbanks' correspondents, others will find the plan of the book (an almanack filled out with health hints, meditations and so on) a little forced. But no reader can really argue with the spaciousness of mind, the wide range of human cont...