A Mixture of Frailties Paperback by Robertson Davies

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2015-10-13)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 368 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780143197034
• Item Weight: 272.16 grams
• Dimensions: 7.74 x 5.06 x 0.94 cm

A literary classic from one of Canada's greatest storytellers, A Mixture of Frailties is the vivid and moving conclusion to the Salterton Trilogy.

A Mixture of Frailties is Robertson Davies's first extended engagement with one of the great neuroses of Canadian culture: the former colony's artistic relationship with Europe, and particularly with Britain.      

Davies begins his story with the funeral of Louisa Bridgetower. 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 into a cosmopolitan soprano with a unique—and tragicomic—career.     

A Mixture of Frailties is so much more than the story of Monica Gall's life in London and her education as a singer. It is an account of her education as a human being. The result is a vivid, comic, and frequently moving novel.

About the Author

ROBERTSON DAVIES (1913–1995) was born and raised in Ontario, and was educated at a variety of schools, including Upper Canada College, Queen’s University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He had three successive careers: as an actor with the Old Vic Company in England; as publisher of The Peterborough Examiner; and as university professor and first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, from which he retired in 1981 with the title of Master Emeritus.

He was one of Canada’s most distinguished men of letters, with several volumes of plays and collections of essays, speeches, and belles lettres to his credit. As a novelist he gained worldwide fame for his three trilogies: The Salterton Trilogy, The Deptford Trilogy, and The Cornish Trilogy, and for later novels Murther & Walking Spirits and The Cunning Man.

His career was marked by many honours: He was the first Canadian to be made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was a Companion of the Order of Canada, and he received honorary degrees from twenty-six American, Canadian, and British universities.