Fifth Business was published by Macmillan of Canada in 1970, the first volume of the Deptford Trilogy and the novel that transformed Davies from a respected Canadian man of letters into an internationally celebrated novelist. He was fifty-seven when it was published — the latest of many late-blooming careers in this collection.
The novel is framed as a letter: Dunstan Ramsay, a retired schoolmaster, writes to the headmaster of his school to correct the bland, inaccurate account of his career published in the school magazine. What follows is the story of his life — but a life defined not by his own achievements (which are considerable: scholar of saints, military hero, adviser to a famous magician) but by a single moment in boyhood.
In the opening scene, the boy Percy Boyd Staunton throws a snowball with a stone hidden in it at Dunstan. Dunstan ducks; the snowball hits Mary Dempster, a pregnant woman, triggering premature labor. Her son Paul is born prematurely; Mary is left “simple” (mentally damaged); and the consequences ripple outward for sixty years. Percy becomes a wealthy businessman and politician who has forgotten the incident; Dunstan becomes obsessed with it (with Mary Dempster, whom he comes to regard as a saint, and with the guilt of having ducked). Paul becomes Magnus Eisengrim, a world-famous stage magician.
The title refers to a concept from opera: “Fifth Business” is the role that is neither hero, heroine, confidante, nor villain — but the essential character without whom the plot cannot function. Dunstan is Fifth Business in his own life: always present, always essential, never the protagonist.
Collecting Fifth Business
First edition (Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1970): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First Canadian edition in dust jacket: $80–$250
- Signed first edition: $200–$500
- US first (Viking, 1970): $30–$80
- UK first (Macmillan London, 1971): $20–$50