Salterton Trilogy
3 primary works • 5 total works Complete
Book 1
The debut novel that launched an astonishing literary career, Tempest-Tost is a magnificent display of Robertson Davies's legendary wit and the first novel in the Salterton Trilogy.
An amateur production of The Tempest provides a colourful backdrop for a hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare's plays, falls in love with the beautiful Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows that she has her own plans, Hector despairs and tries to commit suicide on the play's opening night.
Written in 1951, Tempest-Tost is a wonderfully satirical story of small-town Canada that reveals humorous yet powerful universal truths.
An amateur production of The Tempest provides a colourful backdrop for a hilarious look at unrequited love. Mathematics teacher Hector Mackilwraith, stirred and troubled by Shakespeare's plays, falls in love with the beautiful Griselda Webster. When Griselda shows that she has her own plans, Hector despairs and tries to commit suicide on the play's opening night.
Written in 1951, Tempest-Tost is a wonderfully satirical story of small-town Canada that reveals humorous yet powerful universal truths.
Book 2
Winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, Leaven of Malice is the second novel in Robertson Davies's much-loved Salterton Trilogy, now part of the new Modern Classics series.
The following announcement appeared in the Salterton Evening Bellman: "Professor and Mrs. Walter Vambrace are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Pearl Veronica, to Solomon Bridgetower, Esq., son of..."
And not a word was true. Although the malice that prompted this false engagement notice was aimed at three people only--Solly Bridgetower, Pearl Vambrace, and Gloster Ridley, the anxiety-ridden local newspaper editor--before the leaven of malice had ceased to work, it had changed permanently, for good or ill, the lives of many of Salterton.
This is the second novel in the Salterton Trilogy, which also includes Tempest-Tost and A Mixture of Frailties, and is another brilliant display of Robertson Davies's legendary wit and erudition.
The following announcement appeared in the Salterton Evening Bellman: "Professor and Mrs. Walter Vambrace are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Pearl Veronica, to Solomon Bridgetower, Esq., son of..."
And not a word was true. Although the malice that prompted this false engagement notice was aimed at three people only--Solly Bridgetower, Pearl Vambrace, and Gloster Ridley, the anxiety-ridden local newspaper editor--before the leaven of malice had ceased to work, it had changed permanently, for good or ill, the lives of many of Salterton.
This is the second novel in the Salterton Trilogy, which also includes Tempest-Tost and A Mixture of Frailties, and is another brilliant display of Robertson Davies's legendary wit and erudition.
Book 3
"A Mixture of Frailties", the third volume of Robertson Davies "Salterton" Trilogy, is his first extended engagement with one of the great neuroses of Canadian culture: Canada's artistic relationship to Europe, and particularly to Britain. Davies begins his story with the funeral of Louisa Bridgetower, the Salterton matron whose imposing presence ranges throughout the earlier volumes of the "Salterton" Trilogy. The substantial income from her estate is to be used to send an unmarried young woman to Europe to pursue an education in the arts. Mrs. Bridgetower's executors end up selecting Monica Gall, an almost entirely unschooled singer whose sole experience comes from performing with the Heart and Hope Gospel Quartet, a rough outfit sponsored by a small fundamentalist group. Monica soon finds herself in England, a pupil of some of Britain's most remarkable teachers and composers, and she gradually blossoms from a Canadian rube to a cosmopolitan soprano with a unique - and tragicomic - career.
