Edmund White vs. Robertson Davies
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Edmund White
1940 – 2025
Edmund Valentine White III was an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and essayist. A pioneering figure in LGBTQ and especially gay literature after the Stonewall riots, he wrote with rare candor about gay identity, relationships, and sex. His work emerged as part of an increasingly solidified and visible LGBTQ community, helping to reshape public narratives at a time when coming out was still a dangerous, even radical act.
"In return for the costliness and inconvenience, the squalor and discomfort of our lives, we get to participate in whatever is the latest. We are never left out …"
Robertson Davies
1913 – 1995
William Robertson Davies was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies gladly accepted for himself. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.
"To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason."