"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
