Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
Download to your computer
Kindle Cloud Reader
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Qty:1
  • List Price: $28.00
  • Save: $9.61 (34%)
FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books.
Only 4 left in stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
What's Bred in the Bone (... has been added to your Cart
Want it Monday, April 11? Order within and choose Two-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
Ship to:
Select a shipping address:
To see addresses, please
or
Please enter a valid US zip code.
or
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.
Used: Good | Details
Sold by Jenson Books Inc
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Good
Comment: This book has already been loved by someone else. It MIGHT have some wear and tear on the edges, have some markings in it, or be an ex-library book. Over-all it's still a good book at a great price! (if it is supposed to contain a CD or access code, that may be missing)

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and .

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you increase your sales. We invite you to learn more about Fulfillment by Amazon .

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 3 images

What's Bred in the Bone (Cornish Trilogy) Paperback – November 4, 1986

by
Robertson Davies (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Robertson Davies Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central
Robertson Davies (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 28 customer reviews
See all 21 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Price
New from Used from
Hardcover
"Please retry"
—
$16.73 $0.01
Paperback
"Please retry"
$18.39
$13.45 $0.01
Audible, Unabridged
"Please retry"
$0.00
Free with your Audible trial
Mass Market Paperback
"Please retry"
—
— $3.19
Audio, Cassette, Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
—
— $17.00
Multimedia CD
"Please retry"
$29.95
$18.87 $20.76
When I'm Gone
When I'm Gone by Emily Bleeker
Even the happiest marriages have their secrets. Learn more
$18.39 FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. Only 4 left in stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

  • What's Bred in the Bone (Cornish Trilogy)
  • +
  • The Lyre of Orpheus (Cornish Trilogy)
Total price: $39.00
Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Back
  1. The Lyre of Orpheus (Cornish Trilogy)
    Robertson Davies
    3.8 out of 5 stars 16
    Paperback
    $20.61 Prime
  2. Rebel Angels (Cornish Trilogy)
    Robertson Davies
    4.2 out of 5 stars 30
    Mass Market Paperback
  3. The Rebel Angels (King Penguin)
    Robertson Davies
    4.2 out of 5 stars 30
    Paperback
  4. The Lyre of Orpheus
    Robertson Davies
    3.8 out of 5 stars 16
    Hardcover
  5. The Rebel Angels
    Robertson Davies
    4.2 out of 5 stars 30
    Hardcover
  6. Fifth Business (Deptford Trilogy)
    Robertson Davies
    4.5 out of 5 stars 96
    Paperback
    $13.60 Prime
Next
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

  • Series: Cornish Trilogy
  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (November 4, 1986)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140097112
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140097115
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 1.2 x 7.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #90,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsDavies certainly isn't faking
By J. W. Reitsma on June 23, 2001
Format: Paperback
This is the first book by Davies I ever read, and it remains my favourite. As I found out later, it is the centrepiece of what came to be known as the Cornish trilogy. It is the story of Francis Cornish, a talented artist from provincial Canada who is recruited into the British secret service and participates in a major art forging operation intended to thwart the nazis. In the course of the process he finds and loses the love of his life, paints a medieval tryptich depicting the Marriage at Canaan that is also a representation of the major figures in his life (all of them very colourful), unmasks another forger after the war and ultimately has to give up his career as a "medieval painter" when his masterpiece is purchased by a Canadian museum on the assumption that it is genuine. Cornish's life is narrated by his daimon, a sort of "biographical angel", and has many more twists and turns than I can possibly describe here. The book is full of Davies' urbane wit and Jungian wisdom. It tails off a bit towards the end, but that is compensated in the "sequel" about his nephew Arthur and his patronage of the arts, "The Lyre of Orpheus". Highly recommended, but I suggest you start with the first part of this trilogy, "The Rebel Angels". Newcomers, beware: Davies' fiction is highly addictive.
Comment 20 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting Formation but Strange Fruition
By Roger Brunyate TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on July 14, 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Robertson Davies published this middle volume of his "Cornish Trilogy" in 1985. Six years earlier, Sir Anthony Blunt, Britain's leading art historian (and briefly one of my own professors), had been exposed as a Soviet spy. I very much suspect that the surprising conjunction of clandestine operative and connoisseur was in Davies' mind when he planned this book. It is the fictional life story of Francis Cornish, maverick member of a Canadian banking family, who has recently died in possession of large art collection, a great deal of money, and a general air of mystery. Framed by brief comments from his guiding angel, the book tells of his growing up in a Canadian lumber town, his developing interest in art, his somewhat secretive work as an art restorer, and his long association with what is always referred to as "the profession" -- the British intelligence apparatus.

It must be thirty years since I last read a Robertson Davies book. I had forgotten his curiously dated air, like a nineteenth-century novelist (Trollope perhaps) writing in the twentieth, full of detail and with ample diversions. But that is soon forgotten in an entertaining and often racy Bildungsroman, taking Francis from remote Blairlogie to boarding school and college in Toronto, and thence to Oxford. By the time he graduates, we are on page 284 of a 436-page novel, or exactly two-thirds of the way through. Hence the strange title, from an old proverb: "What's bred in the bone will not out of the flesh" -- the implication being that you cannot understand a person until you know his formation.Read more ›
3 Comments 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the greats
By A Customer on October 1, 1997
Format: Paperback
What's bred in the bone will out in the flesh, the saying goes. Sheer genius must have composed the vast mass of Robertson Davies' bones. This wonderfully witty novel is typical of Davies' brilliant, erudite & gripping style. It left me aghast with wonder that one man can know so much, cover it so well and tie his references together and all the while remain hugely entertaining. This is the middle part of the Cornish Trilogy and as stunning as the other two. Two angels discuss the life of a deceased art collector and philanthropist and flashbacks show how the young man came to be widely respected from a life as an art forger. If you haven't already read "The Rebel Angels" do it, If you have, you have no need to read further, you will want to buy this book anyway. This is one of the best books I have ever read and Robertson Davies is one of the greats.
1 Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsEven without the trilogy, an excellent book
By JulieS on June 26, 2000
Format: Paperback
I didn't realize this was the middle book of the Cornish trilogy and read it first. I haven't read the other two yet, but I have to say that this book is excellent and one of the most entertaining books I have read this year. This book chronicles the odd adventures of Francis Cornish in a sweeping story which moves from Canada to Europe. Francis Cornish is just enough unlucky that you sympathize with his trials and tribulations, but his fantastic artistic skills and his many riches make him someone the reader might envy and not understand. Davies is an expert at telling this sort of life story, and I think this one is even more enjoyable than Fifth Business. He has a sense of what it is like to have characters at the hands of fate; in this novel, the daimons quite literally command and shape Francis's destiny. Reading this book definitely wanted to make me read the rest of the trilogy.
Comment 11 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the best novels ever written in any language.
By desefinado on October 14, 2001
Format: Paperback
Davies always anchors his world in the primal instincts, the truths of human nature. You are never quite prepared for the surprising complexity of his characters or the fate that awaits them. The realistic evolution of Francis from troubled boyhood to artistic savant is really a modern version of David Copperfield, except the female characters are more fully dimensioned than Dickens could ever manage. And there is nothing of Dicken's stuffiness here. This is great literature with a Monty Python flair. No matter how you slice it a convincing argument can be made that during the last ten years of his life Davies was the greatest living novelist writing in English.
1 Comment 12 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Great coming of age. Thought provoking and FUNNY!

Published 7 days ago by lily
5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the best books I have ever read

One of the best books I have ever read. I've read it four times and keep finding it more interesting. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Raymond Fortunato
5.0 out of 5 starsHow a neglected child grows up to be an art forger

This is the most charming and memorable book I have read all year. When I raved about it to those I thought would enjoy it, they all had read it and recalled it as one of their... Read more

Published 11 months ago by Petunia
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat choice!

I love this book and wanted a book that would reflect that. Perfect condition and love to look at it.

Published on June 15, 2013 by Kelly O.
5.0 out of 5 starsRead this one first - forget about the trilogy - it stands on its own

Robertson Davies was a treasure - a deceptively straightforward writer with surprising depths. His best books wildly entertain while evoking a time, and characters, with subtlety... Read more

Published on June 15, 2013 by D.S. Cahr
3.0 out of 5 starsWell-written but boring

Davies is a great technical writer, and artistically engaging. However, I have always found his novels to be either dull or filled with characters that I find totally... Read more

Published on October 22, 2012 by Rumblefish
4.0 out of 5 starsSatire at its best

I avoided Robertson Davies for many years, and the only reason I read this one was that a friend asked me to read it aloud to him. I'm glad I did. Read more

Published on August 20, 2012 by S. J. Dunn
5.0 out of 5 starsA superior novel by a superior writer

This is the second volume in the "Cornish" trilogy, but it mostly comes chronologically before the first volume, Rebel Angels. Read more

Published on April 26, 2011 by Michael K. Smith
5.0 out of 5 starsRobertson Davies at his Best

A must read for people who appreciate Robertson Davies. Davies' command of language and interesting ideas makes you feel that almost every sentence is work of art! Read more

Published on April 5, 2011 by Dave
5.0 out of 5 starsDavies delivers another erudite, interesting work.

Robertson Davies' Cornish Trilogy hits its second instalment, which was in some ways his highest-profile novel: it was the only of his eleven published novels to be shortlisted for... Read more

Published on March 1, 2010 by Sean Curley

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

What's Bred in the Bone (Cornish Trilogy)
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more
This item: What's Bred in the Bone (Cornish Trilogy)
Set up a giveaway

There's a problem loading this menu right now.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.