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{{Short description|Novel by Robertson Davies}}
{{infobox book |
| name = What's Bred in the Bone
| image = File:WhatsBredInTheBone.jpg
| caption = First edition
| author = Robertson Davies
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = Canada
| language = English
| series = [[The Cornish Trilogy]]
| genre = literary
| publisher = Macmillan of Canada
| pub_date = 1985
| media_type = Print ([[Hardback]], [[Paperback]])
| pages = 436
| isbn = 0-7715-9684-7
| oclc = 27129845
| preceded_by = [[The Rebel Angels]]
| followed_by = [[The Lyre of Orpheus (novel)|The Lyre of Orpheus]]
}}
'''''What's Bred in the Bone''''' is the second novel in the [[Canadians|Canadian]] writer [[Robertson Davies]]' [[The Cornish Trilogy|Cornish Trilogy]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=McCaffrey |first=Larry |date=15 December 1985 |title=Painter, Forger, Misery, Spy |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/24/reviews/davies-bredbone.html?scp=50&sq=%2522World%2520of%2520Wonders%2522&st=cse |access-date=2023-04-12 |website=archive.nytimes.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=1 November 1985 |title=What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780670809165 |access-date=2023-04-12 |website=www.publishersweekly.com}}</ref> It is the life story of Francis or Frank Cornish, whose death and [[will (law)|will]] were the starting point for the first novel, ''[[The Rebel Angels]]''.
After a brief [[frame tale|framing]] scene among characters from ''The Rebel Angels'', the novel turns to a conversation between the Recording [[Angel]] and the [[daemon (mythology)|daimon]] in charge of Cornish's life. The main part of the book is that life as narrated by the Recording Angel, interspersed with comments in which the daimon explains how he worked to make Cornish a great man.▼
==Plot==
We follow Cornish's life from his two Canadian grandparents — part of "what's bred in the bone" — through his childhood as a wealthy and precocious misfit in a small [[Ontario]] town, his education in [[Toronto]] (in which we meet Dunstan Ramsay from [[the Deptford Trilogy]]) and [[University of Oxford|Oxford]], his unusual apprenticeship as a restorer and painter in [[Nazi Germany]], his wartime experiences in [[England]], and his later career as a collector and a [[Patronage#The_Arts|patron]] of the arts in Toronto.▼
▲After a brief [[frame tale|framing]] scene among characters from ''The Rebel Angels'', the novel turns to a conversation between the
▲We follow Cornish's life from his two Canadian grandparents
Cornish's daimon believes that people develop through adversity and provides Cornish with plenty, most obviously at the hands of his childhood classmates and his artistic master in Germany, but also in two love affairs and in a friendship with a young man who in some ways is Cornish's apprentice. Another form of adversity is Cornish's situation as a talented artist whose interests and skills are out of fashion.
First published by [[Macmillan of Canada]] in [[1985 in literature|1985]], ''What's Bred in the Bone'' was on
''What's Bred in the Bone'' is the second novel of the ''Cornish Trilogy''. It was followed by ''[[The Lyre of Orpheus (novel)|The Lyre of Orpheus]]''. It is also connected to earlier novels; when Cornish is at school in Toronto, one of his teachers is Dunstan Ramsay from the [[Deptford Trilogy]]. There are many parallels to be found in [[W. Somerset Maugham]]'s ''[[Of Human Bondage]]''.{{citeneeded|date=August 2019}}
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
== External
* {{iblist title|id=22226|title=What's Bred in the Bone}}
{{Robertson Davies}}
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