Editing Robertson Davies (section)

===1980s and 1990s===
When Davies retired from his position at the university, his seventh novel, a satire of academic life, ''[[The Rebel Angels]]'' (1981), was published, followed by ''[[What's Bred in the Bone]]'' (1985) which was short-listed for the [[Booker Prize]] for fiction in 1986.<ref name="NPRD"/> ''[[The Lyre of Orpheus (novel)|The Lyre of Orpheus]]'' (1988) follows these two books in what became known as ''[[The Cornish Trilogy]]''.<ref name="RDCB&A"/>

During his retirement from academe he continued to write novels which further established him as a major figure in the literary world: ''[[Murther and Walking Spirits]]'' (1991) and ''[[The Cunning Man]]'' (1994).<ref name="RDCB&A"/> A third novel in what would have been a further trilogy – the Toronto Trilogy – was in progress at the time of Davies's death.<ref name="RD"/> He also realized a long-held dream when he penned the [[libretto]] to [[Randolph Peters]]' opera: ''[[The Golden Ass (opera)|The Golden Ass]]'', based on ''[[The Golden Ass|The Metamorphoses]]'' of [[Apuleius|Lucius Apuleius]], just like that written by one of the characters in Davies's 1958 ''A Mixture of Frailties''. The opera was performed by the [[Canadian Opera Company]] at the [[Hummingbird Centre]] in Toronto, in April 1999, several years after Davies's death.<ref>{{cite news|title=The Golden Ass|url=https://variety.com/1999/film/reviews/the-golden-ass-1200457738/|work=Variety|access-date=15 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151015204518/http://variety.com/1999/film/reviews/the-golden-ass-1200457738/|archive-date=15 October 2015|url-status=live |first=Mira |last=Friedlander |date=17 May 1999}}</ref>

In its obituary, ''[[The Times]]'' wrote: "Davies encompassed all the great elements of life&nbsp;... His novels combined deep seriousness and psychological inquiry with fantasy and exuberant mirth."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000008384,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112001619/http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0%2C%2C1000008384%2C00.html |archive-date=12 January 2012 |title=Robertson Davies |website=Penguin.ca }}</ref> He remained close friends with [[John Kenneth Galbraith]], attending Galbraith's eighty-fifth birthday party in [[Boston]] in 1993,<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Parker |title=John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics |place=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2005 |pages=532ff photos}}</ref> and became so close a friend and colleague of the American novelist [[John Irving]] that Irving gave one of the scripture readings at Davies's funeral in the chapel of [[Trinity College, Toronto]]. He also wrote in support of [[Salman Rushdie]] when the latter was threatened by a ''[[fatwā]]''  from [[Ayatollah]] [[Ruhollah Khomeini]] of Iran in reaction to supposed anti-Islam expression in his novel ''[[The Satanic Verses]]''.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Rushdie File|url=https://archive.org/details/rushdiefile00lite|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/rushdiefile00lite/page/172 172]|access-date=8 October 2015|editor1-first=Lisa |editor1-last=Appignanesi |editor2-first=Sara |editor2-last=Maitland |publisher=Syracuse University Press |year=1990 |isbn=0-8156-2494-8}}</ref>