The Cornish Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

The Cornish Trilogy #1-3

by Robertson Davies

All three books in Robertson Davies’s darkly witty Cornish Trilogy collected in one volume. The destinies of this remarkable cast of characters come together in The Rebel Angels, What’s Bred in the Bone, and The Lyre of Orpheus.

The Rebel Angels. Set in motion by the death of eccentric art patron and collector Francis Cornish, a goodhearted priest and scholar, a professor with a passion for the darker side of medieval psychology, a defrocked monk, and a rich young businessman who inherits some troublesome paintings are all helplessly beguiled by the same coed.

What’s Bred in the Bone. This worthy follow-up goes back to Cornish’s humble beginnings in a spellbinding tale of artistic triumph and heroic deceit. It is a tale told in stylish, elegant prose, endowed with lavish portions of Davies’ wit and wisdom.

The Lyre of Orpheus. The Cornish Foundation is thriving under the directorship of Arthur Cornish when Arthur and his beguiling wife decide to undertake a project worthy of Francis Cornish. Hulda Schnakenburg is commissioned to complete E.T.A. Hoffmann’s unfinished opera Arthur of Britain, or The Magnanimous Cuckold; and the scholarly priest Simon Darcourt finds himself charged with writing the libretto.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Canada, Literature, Classics, Magical Realism, Literary Fiction

1146 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

William Robertson Davies, CC, FRSC, FRSL (died in Orangeville, Ontario) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is sometimes said to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate college at the University of Toronto.

Novels:

The Salterton Trilogy
• Tempest-tost (1951)
• Leaven of Malice (1954)
• A Mixture of Frailties (1958)
The Deptford Trilogy
• Fifth Business (1970)
• The Manticore (1972)
• World of Wonders (1975)
The Cornish Trilogy
• The Rebel Angels (1981)
• What's Bred in the Bone (1985)
• The Lyre of Orpheus (1988)
The Toronto Trilogy (Davies' final, incomplete, trilogy)
• Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)
• The Cunning Man (1994)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertso...

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

The late Robertson Davies is remembered best for his three trilogies (although he may not have intended the individual novels to form "trilogies" from the git-go). There's the largely comic SALTERTON TRILOGY, written in the Fifties; the best-known DEPTFORD TRILOGY from the late Sixties/Seventies.

Davies' CORNISH TRILOGY was written during the 1980s, just after Davies' thirteen-year term as founding Master of Toronto University's Massey College came to an end. (In case you were wondering, Massey was an endowed startup which opened its doors in 1963 and drew on the Massey-Harris-Ferguson wealth, as in farm equipment). Robertson Davies helped give it its protected college-within-a-larger university character, right down to the neo-Gothic architecture.

All this matters because much of CORNISH TRILOGY takes place in a simulacrum of Toronto's Massey called the "College of St. John and Holy Ghost," or "Spook" for short. Main characters include a couple of profs. whom Davies clearly modeled on his best and worst sides; fetching and smart graduate student Maria Theresa Theotoky; and the bane of the place, defrocked monk John Parlabane (whose surname in Norman French means "Speaks Well," which may be an irony since he speaks incessantly, revealing only the occasional nugget of truth beneath constant drunkenness). The remaining two volumes deal with the reputation of Arthur Cornish, the gentleman who founded "Spook."

If the Davies fan at this point seems as though some of the themes resemble FIFTH BUSINESS, WORLD OF WONDERS or even A MIXTURE OF FRAILTIES, he or she won't be too far off. However, Davies juggles motifs so adroitly (and, as in the prior trilogies, scoots so effortlessly between Canada and Europe) that CORNISH is an enjoyable trio of novels to read. However, I personally did not enjoy it as much as the prior two trilogies. For one reason, there is too much self-consciously erudite talk among these presumably gifted scholars, though it was fun to see the main characters chat over dinner about a certain four-letter word beginning with "c" that I dare not print here. (This gang, polymaths to a fault, refer constantly to the word's etymology using older references, without ever invoking today's taboo usage.)

Should you read THE CORNISH TRILOGY? Yes, but it's better to start with THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY first. Should you read THE CORNISH TRILOGY then? Yes, but I for one would prefer THE SALTERTON TRILOGY as second course. If by then you are hooked on Davies' rhythms and raconteurs, go for it, but don't push any drunk monks out of the way to get to it.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm currently re-reading my collection of Robertson Davies. I LOVE THIS MAN. His prose is so elegant, so kindly disposed toward human frailty (but not unwilling to jest about it). In a wondrous way, all of his novels convince me-- to the heart-- that there are mysterious and benign forces at work in our world.
He is my "literary god"!
I recommend "The Deptford Trilogy" for its lively and insightful portrayal of theater folk and musicians and "The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks"-- not a novel but a collection of humorous ephemara that makes me laugh out loud.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

Robertson Davies is at once the P.G. Wodehouse of Anglo-Protestant Ontario and its John Ruskin; that is to say he writes delightful farces about the social, cultural and intellectual elites of Ontario set in the second half of the twentieth century. At the same he presents extremely conservative but highly lucid theses about literature, painting and music. I am horrified to discover how often I agree with him. I am in absolute agreement with him on the tremendous merits of "Golden Ass" by Apuleius. In the Cornish Trilogy argues for the tremendous importance of the works of E.T.A. Hoffman, nineteenth century opera and "Le Morte du roi Arthur" which I also agree with fervently. I am thus profoundly saddened to say that the trilogy is an abominable dog's breakfast.
"The Rebel Angels" which opens in the trilogy is an appalling comedy about academic life at Trinity and Massey Colleges of the University of Toronto. It does nothing to set the table for the two more serious works that follow.
The second volume "What's Bred in the Bone" is a novelistic treatment of the artistic problems posed by the career of the brilliant Flemish forger "Hans van Meegeren" who painted pictures that he was able to sell as being works of Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer. The thing is that none of his works were copies. Van Meegeren simply created paintings on themes consistent with the preferences of painters whose names he put to them. While following the style of the others, he was innovative and original. In other words, Van Meegeren produced great art in order to defraud individuals and museums of their money. In the Davies novel, the forger is not a Belgian but a clever young man from the Ottawa Valley named Francis Cornish. The problem is that Davies adds nothing new to the debate of the question of whether a false and fraudulent attribution in any way diminishes the quality of the art itself. In my opinion Luigi Guarnieri's 200 page novel about van Meegeren ("The Double Life of Vermeer") gives a much more thorough treatment of the topic than does in Robertson Davies who devotes to it 430 pages of "What's Bred in the Bone" and another 100 pages in the "The Lyre of Orpheus" which is the concluding volume of the Cornish Trilogy.
"The Lyre of Orpheus" tells the story of how Arthur Cornish, the nephew and estate executor of Francis the forger, uses the money from the estate to complete an opera begun by E.T.A. Hoffman and mount a production at the Stratford Festival. Whilie this is going on, his wife like Guinevere in Thomas Mallory's "Le Morte du roi Arthur" will have an affair with the stage director. This third volume explores the question of what it means to live for art, resolves the issues on artistic fraud raised in "What's Bred in the Bone" and dismisses adultery as a triviliaty. Most importantly it addresses the question of whether or not an artistic living in one era is entitled to adopt the world view of an artist living in another era. Francis Cornish in "What's Bred in the Bone" adopts the world view and symbolic system of Frans Holbein in his paintings. His nephew Arthur in "The Lyre of Orpheus" creates an opera using the style, technique and philosophical values of E.T.A. Hoffman.
The Cornish Trilogy addresses some very interesting topics but does so in a appallingly long-winded manner. There is indeed some wheat but the volume of the chaff is overwhelming.

[Ben Skeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cornish Trilogy consists of three books. Each could stand on its own, but since they feature the same characters, and have similar themes and structures (in each book, for instance, the characters discuss a different artist), you should read them in order. The plot is too complex to explain in detail, but suffice it to say that the cast of characters, which includes a defrocked monk, a graduate student, her Roma mother who uses human feces to repair valuable violins, an Anglican priest, and an art forger, provide sufficient material for an excellent story.
This trilogy is engrossing and, at times, laugh-out loud hilarious. But under the enjoyable plot and lovely prose is a view of the world that changed my life. Davies writes stories that take place in the real world, but his stories are full of magic and the supernatural. This is possible because Davies understands that magic is all about perspective. Our ancestors discovered certain phenomenon, and described them in terms that they could understand, involving the gods and magic. We explain the same phenomenon using science. The fact is that we have no real idea what is happening, we just have our own way of explaining it. Davies writes about characters who are willing to suspend their modern skepticism and scientific outlook, and recognize that the world is a magical place. If you have been flirting with Davies for some time, buy this book and get started.

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cornish Trilogy has a special place in my heart, as it was the first of Davies's books that I ever had the good fortune to read.

Davies is my absolute favorite author, and I view his bulky trilogies almost as security blankets. I've read each several times, and yet they never seem to repeat themselves.
His writing is warm and witty; he has love for all his characters, even the not-so-easy to love ones. And all get exactly what they deserve.

This particular trilogy deals with college life, art fraud and opera, in that order. If that sounds boring, just give it a try. Affairs, unrequited love, requited love, a death involving knitting needles and a pink ribbon, a scientist studying human waste, and a surprising look into the life of a modern gypsy family...and that's just in the first book.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The series that made Davies one of my favorite writers. His language is brilliant, his characters are fantastically human, but it's the way he can delve into any subject--operatic vocal performance, the medieval diet, art forgery, Rabelais, gypsy fortune-telling--that makes his books such a delight.

The last book in this trilogy, The Lyre of Orpheus, is also the source of one of the best lines ever: "A Philistine is someone who is content to live in a wholly unexplored world."

[Paul Dembina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really my cup of tea but quite entertaining.

The Rebel Angels **

The 1st book I found a bit tedious. Davies has some attitudes that may have been in line with the times he was writing but I think are a little dated now. His tendency to be a little misogynistic and slightly homophobic are more to the fore in this book than some of the later ones. He's not good at female characters and all the campus in-fighting stuff I found uninteresting

What's Bred In The Bone ****

This was my favourite of the 3. It's a more focused story and very engaging

The Lyre Of Orpheus ***

The 3rd book returns to the characters of the 1st book but has a central plot device (the staging of an opera) that keeps it in focus.

I picked this collection up for a song at a charity shop and so will return it back into the wild for another to enjoy

[Lindz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phew, I am glade I am finished. Not because it was terrible slog (within 12 pages I missed university), but because there was so much of it, 1137 pages (admittedly 3 books, but there was something magical about reading them in one chunk), there are so many gorgeous ideas about art and philosophy knotted together, there were times it did feel like the ghost of Robinson Davis was sneaking into my room and adding more pages because he had a last minute idea.

So yes this book was a challenge. It did not help that I was also watching 'Man vs Food' at the same time, a show which contains a man visiting every stupid food challenge in America, and having to eat a weeks worth of calories in one hour. It has a lot of things wrapped in bacon and deep fried and weighing usually five pounds (it's quite a good show). How Adam Richman hasn't died Elvis style I am not sure. But when I was reading the Cornish Trilogy I had this in the back of my mind...

"I'm in in the middle of Hogtown in Toronto to take on the infamous Cornish Challenge; 6 pounds of Canadian literary goodness by the beardy Daddy of Canadian words himself, Robertson Davis. If I can finish this challenge I will have devoured 6 pounds of greasy layered medieval mysticism, Gypsy superstition, 19th century romanticism and rye 20th century cynicism, and I must do it in three weeks. Can a rip through this quirky Canadian Classic, or will I be bogged down in the detail and classical references unable to get out. This is 'Woman vs Book". And today Woman Won!"

This is a special book, or books. There are so many flavours and textures, much like a giant burrito. The characters are gorgeous and fully realised. I was completely immersed in this strange, exclusive and at times bizarre little world, there was a timeliness to Cornish and his contemporaries, it took me nearly 200 pages to figure out the time 'Rebel Angels' was set because Davis finally mentioned a date. I may need a rest and an Alka Seltzer but I will be back.

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the Davies trilogies, this is my favorite. Each book is a masterpiece: the"Rebel Angels" is a fascinating novel with a powerful intrigue where alchemy, greed and comedy brush elbows. The characters are truly extraordinary in their eccentricity. What is bred in the bone is a biography of sort, the corner stone of the trilogy, a deep dive into art, truth and illusion. The Lyre of Orpheus closes the trilogy with some resolution for some of the characters but also with an incredibly entertaining foray in the world of music.

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won't review this specifically, as I read the individual hardcovers comprising it, but in short:

The Rebel Angels ***
What's Bred in the Bone***** (one of his VERY best!)
The Lyre of Orpheus****

So all in all, rather a good innings for the last of Davies' three trilogies, though personally I have a real soft spot for the first one, the "Salterton Trilogy".

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second book in the Cornish trilogy (Cornish is the name of a couple of the characters) was way more involving than the first. It's the life story of Francis Cornish, and what a life.

In the first book -- The Rebel Angels -- Francis has died and that book is about the three people Francis chose as executors of his estate. Francis was an art collector.

In Bone, we learn that he was much more than an art collector. His story is told in detail by his "Daimon" and the Recording Angel.

I thought it was kinda sad that his friends and relatives will never know the "real" Francis. I liked the book. I learned a bit about art too.

[J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have not read Robertson Davies, please do yourself a favor and read something by him, preferably one of the trilogies in its entirety. I think my favorite is "The Cornish Trilogy," although "The Deptford Trilogy" is a close second. The fact is that Davies seems incapable of writing a dull word. However, the send up of academia and the church in "Rebel Angels" is screamingly funny. Also, the production of a hitherto unknown opera by E.T.A. HOffman in "The Lyre of Orpheus" is spot on if you've ever produced an opera (something I once did in a previous life).

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Be not another, if you can be yourself.’ — Epigram by Paracelsus.

Consisting of three related titles – The Rebel Angels (1981), What’s Bred in the Bone (1985), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988) – the Cornish trilogy joined two other completed series from Robertson Davies. Preceded by the Salterton and Deptford titles, the Cornish series similarly presents three narratives, each of which could theoretically work as a standalone but which work best if read in order.

As with his other trilogies, it’s fascinating to see how Davies, like a literary Wagner, introduces a selection of striking themes and motifs from across the board – from music, drama, literature, art, fakery, prestidigitation and even the occult – all seemingly without batting an eyelid.

Sadly for us the author didn’t live long enough to complete a final trilogy, leaving Murther and Walking Spirits (1991) and The Cunning Man (1994) to give some indication of what a third title might touch on. But at least with the sequence considered here there’s a sense of closure as well as of satisfaction.

The University of St John and the Holy Ghost (known to residents as ‘Spook’) is the setting for all three novels. This fictional campus is an amalgam of two University of Toronto institutions – Trinity College, where Davies taught for twenty years, and Massey College for graduates, where he was the founding Master in 1963. Here at Spook a crisis has arisen: the death of Francis Cornish, patron of the arts and avid collector, has left a terribly involved will for members of faculty who’d agreed to become executors. And the resultant Cornish Trust has to decide how best to disburse their embarrassment of art treasures and monies as well as what aspects of Frank Cornish’s secretive history to reveal.

And so, in an intricately layered sequence Davies introduces us to a fascinating diversity of characters: the enigmatic Francis Cornish and his privileged upbringing in a logging Canadian town, his artistic talents taking him to Europe and clandestine activities in the middle of the 20th century; there's also his nephew Arthur Cornish and the graduate student who'll be his talented new wife Maria – saddled with her gypsy family – who will head the Trust; a reprobate monk causing mayhem, a cast of academics who are variously jealous, talented, or sociopathic; plus an eccentric student prodigy who's reconstituting an Arthurian opera by an early Romantic composer.

The ties that bind these characters’ life stories together are matters as varied as the restoration of musical instruments and Old Masters, arcane East European cuisine and alchemy, scatological literature and espionage, rivalries and love triangles, New World culture and Old World roots. Having a cast composed of individuals with specialisms in these and other matters of course ensures that their dialogues are always going to be erudite, informed and (as is the way with specialists) chockful of subtleties, simultaneously allowing for mutual comprehension, latent confusion, and barbed comments.

Further, to ensure the overall cohesion of this trio of tales skill is required to balance intention and effect, to veil when artistic homage becomes counterfeit, when “let’s pretend” is taken seriously as if it were actuality. The Latin epigram loosely translated as ‘Be not another, if you can be yourself’ – <>Alterius non sit, qui suus esse potest<> – was the motto applied to portraits of the Renaissance physician and alchemist Paracelsus; and so though Davies uses it as a signifier only for the first title of the trilogy, it applies equally to the whole.

What is genuine, what is homage, and how may we tell if something or someone seems to be other than what they are? On the other hand, if we never played games of “Let’s pretend” how humdrum would life be?

[Mars · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has all the makings of a classic - it's well-written, it's intelligent, it's somewhat educational, but it's pretty dense and there isn't a whole lot of action, so reading very large stretches of it at a time gets somewhat tiring. And this beast is over 1300 pages long, so I've been gnawing on it for two months - but while there were times I didn't want to pick it up just then, there was never any question that I wanted to finish it.

In retrospect, it may be one of the best things I've ever read.


(to toss in some feedback by one of my friends, after I gave the book to her as a present - her description is much better!)

"I don't think I've enjoyed reading a book as much in a long while. I've just finished the first book of the lot, and oh - it's like spending an amazing week talking to an extremely intelligent, witty, non-conventional and articulate person about life, the universe and everything, no holds barred. I know that I will go back and re-read this book again, very possibly right after I finish - to note down quotes and refresh what I think about it. Just the way he writes is marvelous, and his characters have differing, wonderfully non-standard non-cardboard personalities, with common sense, interesting takes on love, life, god, origins/family, knowledge -all those things i'm extremely concerned about now.
Thank you very much for giving me the book, it is certainly going to become one of my core library - books ... that I turn to when I'm extremely sad, extremely happy or extremely lost."

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the other reviews I've read of Davies, it seems that the consensus is that the Deptford trilogy is his best work. I disagree, though it's possible that I do so only because I read this whole trilogy first and hence it holds a special place for me. At any rate, it's a wonderful place to start reading Davies, where his usual dizzying variety of characters spin out their lives, together and separately, and the plotline is interspersed with discussions of Rabelais, Gypsy methods of violin restoration, and meditations on authenticity, genius, and guardian daimons (in the Socratic sense).

[Ann Johnson Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't ask me why I read this trilogy three times. I can't say that of Davies' other works (Even though I've read most of them). Perhaps it's because each stands alone, but yet as a whole the group is so much better as a group than individual books.

Do trudge all the way through the first book. Perservere through the second. The third was my favorite. I have visions of violins "curing" in doo-doo for a year and in the end magically becoming something other-worldly in their value and quality.... Sort of an analogy for the series.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Philistine is someone who is content to live in a wholly unexplored world." This series has a special place in my heart. The characters feel fully dimensional, the humor is smart and intriguing, and anyone who feels the barbs of academic life would greatly enjoy this series.

[Paula C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read Robertson Davies twenty-five years ago and much of it was over my head, so now I'm rereading everything. This trilogy is absolutely my favourite. It's a world, a universe. This is the one I'll want to reread for a third time.

[Emily Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed re-reading this, if a little horrified at how crass it was and how little I’d remembered that (& therefore feeling regret about giving it as a bday present to a new friend….). I do think it’s a very good set of books and I particularly enjoyed What’s Bred in the Bone again (the second book about Francis Cornish) which is very interesting about art and creativity). Work well as a set and all have different vibes which I like but cohesive themes.

[Emma Guthrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just finished the first of this trilogy (The Rebel Angels). It's not like any novel I have read before. It's well written, with a cast of interesting/eccentric characters and the basis of a plot, but the narrative drive is limited and I spent the first half of the book wondering what the point of the story was. And yet.... when I got into periods of concentrated reading of the novel, I found it strangely absorbing.
So if you are willing to absorb yourself into world of the academics and gypsies who inhabit this book and are less concerned with a plot to push things along, I would recommend.
(I have now embarked on the second volume of the trilogy).

[Christopher Walborn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rebel Angels

Robertson Davies’ The Rebel Angels is an engaging and energetic novel with a vigorous sense of humor. The novel reads quickly and never feels weighed down by ideas or seriousness. This is deceptive.

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Davies gives us a novel populated by Medieval and Renaissance scholars. Their intellectual landscape is thus not unnaturally populated by Paracelsus and Rabelais, two constant figures in the dialectic of the novel. Of the two, Rabelais seems the most significant. He is a figure frequently claimed by both sides of the numerous arguments in the novel. He provides a lens through which we see into the characters a bit more deeply than they might hope. Parlabane and McVarish make him a model of vulgarity and misogyny, or perhaps more accurately, misanthropy. To Hollier, he represents an object for his own academic ambition. For Maria and Darcourt—and Davies—he is a model of the best sort of scholar, as we hear from Maria:

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Rabelais was gloriously learned because learning amused him, and so far as I am concerned that is learning’s best justification. Not the only one, but the best.

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It may be wrong to include Darcourt here—as a priest scholar, his greater reference is St. Augustine:

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Conloqui et conridere et vicissim benevole obsequi, simul leger libros dulciloquos, simul nugari et simul honestari.

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In Maria’s translation:

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Conversations and jokes together, mutual rendering of good services, the reading together of sweetly phrased books, the sharing of nonsense and mutual attentions.

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This erudite amusement is a hallmark of everything I have yet read by Davies, and it is tempting to think that the best part of what Davies gives us in this novel is Davies, himself. Davies is more wise than a mere intellectual, and more alive than a modernist. He brings with him the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and with these life fuller than which we are accustomed today.

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What we get from Davies is not a hair shirted historicism, but a sense of wholeness for a consciousness which is fermented in the broadness of human experience. Maria says of Hollier that he studies the Middle Ages because they are truly middle—a vantage from which he can look backward to antiquity, and forward to our post-Renaissance present. This dynamic of looking backward and forward, contrasting each with the other, is at the very heart of The Rebel Angels, a book which makes attractive Paracelsus’ “second paradise.”

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The striving for wisdom is the second paradise of the world.

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What's Bred In The Bone

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to follow...

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The Lyre Of Orpheus

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to follow...

[Mark Bowman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the more memorable reads I've had in quite a while--both because of the length of this epic and also the brilliance of the writing. Canadian Robertson Davies is a truly literary writer with a vast range of knowledge that is rare to find and a joy to read. His extensive vocabulary kindles an appreciation for linguistics--both the sound and the meaning of words. He is a superb storyteller who portrays characters with depth who develop as the saga progresses over several generations in 20th century Canada and Europe. He also brings great wit and irony to his storytelling. Davies' insights into history, the arts, culture, human relationships, social struggle and development are quite profound and refreshingly fascinating to ponder. This book invites a leisurely read to savor and digest each page--but it could take a year to do this. If one could only read one book in a year, this would be one of my top recommendations.

[William Randolph · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've owned this trilogy for a while now, but I had only read the first book in it ("The Rebel Angels"). It didn't strike me as deeply as the Deptford Trilogy. Now, however, I've just finished "What's Bred in the Bone." I've gone ahead and pushed the review up to five stars. I'll probably get to the last one this summer, and then I'll revisit this review and do my best to explain why Robertson Davies does more good for my soul than any other twentieth-century writer I've yet found.

(Finished “The Lyre of Orpheus.” I like this trilogy better than Deptford now!)

[Jan Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my friends has read What's Bred In The Bone, which is what reminded me of this trilogy, which I had in one fat paperback. Since I see the trilogy was published in that format in 1988, let's say I read this in about 1990. I loved it. It was a great reading experience. Best was the middle novel, the one my friend is reading. It was an adventure about a man who uses his great expertise as an artist to engage in art forgery to thwart Nazi aims regarding art. I'm not sure whether his early self-development as an artist was in the earlier book or this one.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

After being so thoroughly delighted with Davies’ Deptford trilogy, I immediately purchased this collection (it was a choice between the Cornish and the Salterton trilogy, and the Cornish won because (1) Dwight Brown recommended it and (2) the store had it). Like the Deptford trilogy, the Cornish trilogy revolves around a single character, but it works its way through the lives of many others as well.

In a sense, The Rebel Angels is two novellas that are split into the same number of chapters that you bounce between. “Second Paradise” is the story of Maria Theotoky, a PhD candidate studying the works of Rabelais, who finds herself drawn into the life of returned professor turned monk, John Parlabane. But the real issue is a secret manuscript that was purchased by the recently deceased Francis Cornish, whom her advisor, as one-third executor of Cornish’s estate, has promised to her as the substance for her doctorate. Unfortunately, the manuscript has vanished. “The New Aubrey” is told from the point of view of Professor the Reverend Simon Darcourt, another third of the multi-headed Cornish executors, who is also a professor’s of Maria’s and an old friend of Parlabane’s. Darcourt has decided to work on a biography of the university professors in the style of Aubrey, and thinks he has plenty to work with in Clem Hollier (Maria’s advisor), Parlabane, and the last third of the executors, Urky McVarish. Confused? You won’t be, because Davies is a master at handling the many threads of the story, and nothing is ever mis-placed. As in the Deptford trilogy, nothing “fantastic” occurs, although the secret manuscript is definitely a fictional device and not something that exists in our world. Maria’s mother, however, is of the old-world gypsies, and there’s a few scenes in which she shows Hollier some gypsy “magic” and fortune-telling, but in each of these cases, one can suppose that nothing extra-worldly is occurring. And, yes, there is a tie between The Rebel Angels and the Deptford books–Parlabane and Hollier are said to have attended school with David Staunton, the subject of The Manticore.

The second book, What’s Bred in the Bone, definitely throws in the fantastic. After a prologue in which the characters from The Rebel Angels, who have formed a trust fund for the use of Francis Cornish’s fortune to promote art, talk about the biography that Darcourt is trying to write of Cornish. From this, two angels (the Lesser Zadkiel, Angel of Biography, and his brother, the Daimon Maimas, Cornish’s personal fiend), take over to tell the story of Cornish from his beginning as scion of the richest family in town, through his introduction to art by a singular book, his religious duology by his Catholic great-aunt and Protestant housekeeper, the art instruction by combining what he learned in the book with the subjects of the local morgue. Then it’s off to boy’s school in which he becomes a pupil of Dunstan Ramsay (the Fifth Business from the book of that name) for a time, then gets drawn into his father’s business as an English spy. All along it is art that imbues him (what is bred in the bone, as the title says), that strengthens him, and, in the end, that sustains him.

The final book picks up where the first book left off, with the Cornish Trust board of directors, Hollier, Darcourt, Maria, Arthur Cornish, and Geraint Powell, deciding to stage a reconstructed opera by one of the university students, even though there is no libretto and the student is a doctoral candidate who has never attempted something of this magnitude before. The opera, an unfinished piece by E.T.A. Hoffman, is Arthur, or The Magnanimous Cuckold, an attempt to put the story of King Arthur as a true opera (rather than the singing in a story of Camelot). The student, Schnak, they soon discover is a belligerent and odiferous genius, but nothing compared to the special advisor that is brought in from Sweden, Dr. Gunilla Dahl-Soot. Darcourt, meanwhile, is frustrated because he is having little luck completing the biography of Francis Cornish, and now is tagged to write a libretto for this opera. Everything comes together, although never in quite the way you expect it to, which is the beauty of Davies’ novels.

To say that I like Robertson Davies would be an understatement. He has, as I’ve said to Jill, become an obsession. I have purchased the Salterton trilogy, which is begging from the shelf to be read, and I expect that you will see mention of it in the next installment. I am, however, saddened. Davies died a little over a year ago, and I know the limits of my obsession as those few books that I have yet to read. One side of me says to savor the moment, the opportunity to read them from a fresh perspective, while the reckless side of me is urging for me to get on with the business as I’m not getting any younger.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing breadth and vision. Davies never wastes a word and the stories are fascinating on every level. Intellectual protagonists show their best and worst facets as they pick their way through professional and personal minefields. The writing is sensational and the frequent digressions into morality, philosophy and, occasionally, mysticism work entirely. The balance, or lack of it, between the old, established ways of university life and the dynamic young intellects which challenge them is fascinating and highly enjoyable.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a long-winded review of the The Debtford Trilogy, which sums up a lot of why I like Robertson Davies, so I would start there if you'd like my opinion.
As for this particular series, which I love even more (likely because I read it first), I'll just say that I wish I knew more about the Roma people, I love the complexity of the character Maria, the history of excrement is fascinating, and the last book has such a fantastic opera scene that I wished it were real and almost cried with joy at just reading it.

[The Final Chapter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mid 1. Robertson Davies has tested the boundaries of when literature no longer fulfils its purpose of acquiring readership in its self-inflated arrogance of illustrating erudition. The middle book of the trilogy served as a welcome hiatus in the dense and tangled web of allegory and art criticism. Will debate long and hard as to whether to attempt any further trilogies by this author.

[Liz]

I got about 175 pages in, but I have to set it aside. There are some interesting characters, but the experience of reading it is like being at a college lecture that never ends, on a subject that you're only somewhat interested in. The university setting is claustrophobic, and all of the characters wax philosophical in nearly the same voice, which is tiring.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of the three trilogies, most would say that the Deptford Triolgy is best, however I loved this the most..