born Aug. 28, 1913, Thamesville, Ont., Can.
died Dec. 2, 1995, Orangeville, Ont.
Canadian novelist and playwright.
Educated at the University of Oxford, Davies for many years edited the Peterborough (Ont.) Examiner and taught at the University of Toronto. He is best known for three trilogies: the Deptford trilogy consists of Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975), novels examining the intersecting lives of three men from a small Canadian town; the Salterton trilogy, three comedies of manners set in a provincial university town; and the so-called Cornish trilogy
The Rebel Angels (1981), What's Bred in the Bone (1985), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988). Davies's novels are notable for satirizing bourgeois provincialism and exploring the relationship between mysticism and art.