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The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
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“Davies introduces us to his alter ego . . . A humorous and insightful picture of postwar Canadian life as seen through the eyes of a delightful eccentric.”—Library Journal
As editor and later publisher of the Peterborough Examiner, Robertson Davies published witty, curmudgeonly, mischievous, and fiercely individualistic columns under the name of his alter ego, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1985, Davies edited and selected from his alter ego’s observations to bring together previous titles in the Marchbanks bibliography: The Diary (1947), The Table Talk (1949), and Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack (1967).
Marchbanks opines on politics, on his furnace, on theatre, on the taxman, on trains, on Christmas, on book-banners, on manners, indeed on everything under the sun. Not only this, but Davies’s copious and quite delectable Notes are “calculated to remove all Difficulties caused by the passage of Time and to offer the Wisdom, not to speak of Whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the Modern Public, in the most convenient form.”
“This writing of four decades ago is consistently incisive, insulting, funny, relevant and altogether interesting.”—The New York Times
“Now this crank of the first order is on full display for the first time in America . . . To explain to his younger American readers such arcana as ‘telegrams’ and ‘coal-burning furnaces,’ Davies has added graceful and comic notes that rival the entertaining opinions of Marchbanks himself.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
As editor and later publisher of the Peterborough Examiner, Robertson Davies published witty, curmudgeonly, mischievous, and fiercely individualistic columns under the name of his alter ego, Samuel Marchbanks. In 1985, Davies edited and selected from his alter ego’s observations to bring together previous titles in the Marchbanks bibliography: The Diary (1947), The Table Talk (1949), and Samuel Marchbanks’ Almanack (1967).
Marchbanks opines on politics, on his furnace, on theatre, on the taxman, on trains, on Christmas, on book-banners, on manners, indeed on everything under the sun. Not only this, but Davies’s copious and quite delectable Notes are “calculated to remove all Difficulties caused by the passage of Time and to offer the Wisdom, not to speak of Whimsicality, of this astonishing man to the Modern Public, in the most convenient form.”
“This writing of four decades ago is consistently incisive, insulting, funny, relevant and altogether interesting.”—The New York Times
“Now this crank of the first order is on full display for the first time in America . . . To explain to his younger American readers such arcana as ‘telegrams’ and ‘coal-burning furnaces,’ Davies has added graceful and comic notes that rival the entertaining opinions of Marchbanks himself.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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Reviews for The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks
Rating: 3.8700000599999997 out of 5 stars
4/5
50 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everyone I meet these days asks me how my furnace is getting on. As a matter of fact, it is behaving very well; cold weather seems to agree with it thoroughly. I have only to whisper my desire down one of the cold-air pipes and it obliges at once. . . .Samuel Marchbanks is the alter ego that Robertson Davies created to write a newspaper column in the Peterborough Examiner. He is a grumpy, curmudgeonly hypochondriac, who loves cats, hates dogs and is ambivalent about children (although I suspect him of being fond of them really). One of his main themes is his yearly struggles with the fiendish furnace in his basement.
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The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks - Robertson Davies
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