Robertson Davies (1913–1995), one of Canada’s most distinguished authors of the twentieth century, was known for his work as a novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. This descriptive bibliography is dedicated to his writing career, covering all publications from his first venture into print at the age of nine to works published posthumously to 2011. Entries include each of Davies’ signed publications and those pseudonymous or anonymous writings he acknowledged having written. Included are his plays, novels, journalism, academic writing, translations, interviews, speeches, lectures, unsigned articles and editorials, films, audio recordings, and multimedia editions. Also listed is a generous sampling of unsigned articles and editorials. Using Davies’ archives and the archives of other authors, organizations, and publishers, Carl Spadoni and Judith Skelton Grant present A Bibliography of Robertson Davies to serve the research demands of Canadian literature and book history scholars.

The fruits of an eighteen-year tradition of Massey College’s annual Gaudy Nights, Robertson Davies’ High Spirits still delights and amuses to this day. Published as an eBook for the first time. In the Introduction to this collection of charming stories, Robertson Davies notes we all need “ghosts as a dietary supplement . . . to stave off that most dreadful of modern ailments, the Rational Rickets.” In one tale, Mr. Davies introduces the ghost of Henrik Ibsen; in another, he brings us face to face with a bust of Charles Dickens, whose “scarlet lips . . . parted in a terrible smile” and whose “beard stirred in a hiccup of repletion.” Sixteen other apparitions manifest themselves, each rendered with Robertson Davies’ special touch–a bit of parody, a touch of true scariness–and all emanating from high spirits.

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in a darkened salon during the course of a fraudulent séance, and from this moment they try to expose and outwit each other at every turn.

This groundbreaking new source of international scope defines the essay as nonfictional prose texts of between one and 50 pages in length. The more than 500 entries by 275 contributors include entries on nationalities, various categories of essays such as generic (such as sermons, aphorisms), individual major works, notable writers, and periodicals that created a market for essays, and particularly famous or significant essays. The preface details the historical development of the essay, and the alphabetically arranged entries usually include biographical sketch, nationality, era, selected writings list, additional readings, and anthologies

The first book in Robertson Davies's acclaimed The Deptford Trilogy, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvement in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Fifth Business stands alone as a remarkable story told by a rational man who discovers that the marvelous is only another aspect of the real. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious clues, low-born birth, high-reaching immorality, and, always, always the fog-enshrouded, enigmatic character of 19th century—London itself. “So compulsively absorbing that reality disappears . . . One is swept along by those enduring emotions that defy modern art and a random universe: hunger for revenge, longing for justice and the fantasy secretly entertained by most people that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded.”—The New York Times “A virtuoso achievement . . . It is an epic, a tour de force, a staggeringly complex and tantalizingly layered tale that will keep readers engrossed in days. . . . The Quincunx will not disappoint you. It is, quite simply, superb.”—Chicago Sun-Times “A bold and vivid tale that invites the reader to get lost in the intoxicating rhythms of another world. And the invitation is irresistible.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A remarkable book . . . In mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated . . . It is an immersing experience.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “To read the first pages is to be trapped for seven-hundred odd more: you cannot stop turning them.”—The New Yorker “Few books, at most a dozen or two in a lifetime, affect us this way. . . . For sheer intricacy and ingenuity, for skill and clarity of storytelling, it is the kind of book readers wait for, a book to get lost in.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer