Manuscript Collection MS COLL 00510A - David Day Papers

David Day (born 1947, Victoria, British Columbia) is a Canadian author and journalist who has published over forty books of poetry, fantasy, literary criticism, natural history, and children's literature, as well as a series of newspaper columns, plays, and scripts for television. Day worked as a logger on Vancouver Island while a student at the University of Victoria and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from its creative writing program in 1976. His first work The Cowichan (1975) was a book of poetry based on his timber camp journals. He is best known for a series of books on the works of J.R.R Tolkien beginning with A Tolkien Bestiary published in 1979. His 1981 book The Domesday Book of Animals treated the subject of animal extinction and inspired the production of the Discovery Channel television series Lost Animals of the 20th Century, for which Day wrote the scripts (1995). In 2015, he published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Decoded, which delves into the “many layers of teaching” coded by Lewis Carroll within the novel (Doubleday). Day resided in Toronto, Ontario for most of his career before relocating back to Victoria in 2022.