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George Richard Wilson Knight (1897–1985) was an English literary critic and academic, known particularly for his interpretation of mythic content in literature, and The Wheel of Fire, a collection of essays on Shakespeare's plays. He was also an actor and theatrical director, and considered an outstanding lecturer.
Knight was educated at Dean Close School, Dulwich College[1] and, after serving as a dispatch rider in World War I in Iraq, India and Persia,[2] he went up to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he read English. He graduated with second-class honours.[3] After Oxford, he went into teaching. From 1923 to 1931 he taught at Hawtreys, Westgate-on-Sea and at Dean Close School, Cheltenham.[2]
The classical scholar William Francis Jackson Knight (1895–1964), of whom he wrote a biography, was his brother.
Knight's first academic post was at Trinity College, Toronto in 1931. He taught at Stowe School from 1941 to 1946. In 1946 he became a Reader in English Literature at the University of Leeds. He remained at Leeds as a Professor of English Literature from 1956 until his retirement in 1962.[citation needed]
At Toronto, he produced and acted in the main Shakespearian tragedies at Hart House Theatre. Among his other productions are Hamlet at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre, London in 1935; This Sceptred Isle at the Westminster Theatre London in 1941; and at Leeds the Agamemnon of Aeschylus in 1946; Racine's Athalie in 1947; and Timon of Athens in 1948.[2]
Knight was a believer in spiritualism and was a vice-president for the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain.[4][5]
