First word, first syllable
A solemn vow: this will be the only time I use an OCA post to play charades.
“Puffing defiance”
From Robertson Davies’s A Mixture of Frailties.
Gall and grammar
From Robertson Davies’s A Mixture of Frailties.
The Braingame
From Robertson Davies’s Leaven of Malice.
Errors
From Robertson Davies’s Leaven of Malice.
Matthew Snelgrove
From Robertson Davies’s Leaven of Malice.
Stricken mountaineers
From Robertson Davies’s Tempest-Tost.
“A dustbin of scraps”
A passage from Tempest-Tost.
Rhythmical snorting
A passage from Tempest-Tost.
“Awful ones for the boys”
A passage from Tempest-Tost.
Ectoplasm
A passage from Tempest-Tost.
“Before Amy came in”
Giving up on Henry James.
Stacey Abrams on Robertson Davies
Stacey Abrams, talking about books with The New York Times.
It’s the most wonderful time
From Robertson Davies’s The Lyre of Orpheus.
Byronic
From Robertson Davies’s The Lyre of Orpheus.
“As a gifted cook makes soup”
From Robertson Davies’s The Lyre of Orpheus.
“Rule number one of scholarship”
From Robertson Davies’s The Lyre of Orpheus.
Horns
A wonderful sentence from Robertson Davies’s What’s Bred in the Bone.
Domestic comedy
Reading Robertson Davies prompted us to look up some details of clerical garb.
“Tick-tack-toe on your apple”
From Robertson Davies’s What’s Bred in the Bone.
“Big with significance for someone”
From the second novel of The Cornish Trilogy, a moment in the growth of the artist’s mind.
Deevie and diskey
Slang of the smart set, from Robertson Davies’s What’s Bred in the Bone.
I’ll say!
Life vs. getting a Ph.D. From Robertson Davies’s The Rebel Angels.
“The Problems of a President”
From Robertson Davies’s The Rebel Angels (1981).
“I might as well”
Just one student knows the answer. From The Rebel Angels.
“The Handkerchief”
Garton’s = Snotrag.
“Say, have you got frogs’ legs?”
Magnus Eisengrim describes Charlie Wanless’s monologist routine “on the bottom shelf of vaudeville.”
“Pretty smart”
Willard the Wizard of Wanless’s World of Wonders tells “his great joke.”
“Big sales”
From Robertson Davies’s World of Wonders.
“But still — a travelling showman”
From Robertson Davies’s The Manticore.