The Rebel Angels is Canadian author Robertson Davies's most noted novel, after those that form his Deptford Trilogy. First published by Macmillan of Canada in 1981, The Rebel Angels is the first of the three connected novels of Davies' Cornish Trilogy. It was followed by What's Bred in the Bone (1985), and The Lyre of Orpheus (1988). Like the rest of the Cornish Trilogy, the novel takes place in the same universe as the Deptford Trilogy, with the major characters Clement Hollier and John Parlabane being alums of Colborne College (the college where Dunstan Ramsay taught history in Fifth Business) and former classmates of Boy Staunton's son David.