Papers of Margaret K. Knight

The core of this collection is a series of subject-based files containing cuttings, xeroxes and correspondence, dating from the 1950s - 1980s, and arranged by Margaret Knight into the following alphabetical sequence: BBC and religious broadcasting; Catholicism - anti; Catholicism - pro; Catholic delinquency; Christian apologetics; Christianity - general; Communism; Comparative religion; Delinquency; Double-think; Education, including material on 1966 art, moral education, and overseas education; Hell; Historical material regarding the Christian church; Humanism - great humanists; Humanism - pamphlets; Jung; Pontifications; References (mainly for quotations and to printed works - includes correspondence about Morals Without Religion, and Other Essays (London: Dobson, 1955)); Religious instruction - cuttings, pamphlets and correspondence; Humour; Slavery - anti; Social impulses; Statistical data - including opinions on religious matters; Suffering - miscellaneous cuttings; Miscellaneous - including material on sex education, family planning and the population explosion.

Other material deposited includes school and college lecture notes; articles and reviews by Margaret Knight, including cuttings, off-prints and xeroxes, 1950s - 1980s; notebooks entitled Route Diaries, giving accounts of travels by Margaret Knight, 1964 and 1970; and 1 file of personal papers (closed until 2113).

Margaret Kennedy was born in Herefordshire in 1903 and graduated from Cambridge in the early 1920s. She began working at the National Institute of Industrial Psychology in London, but moved to Aberdeen after her marriage, in 1936, to Arthur Rex Knight (1903 - 1963), Anderson lecturer in Psychology at Aberdeen University, 1929 - 1963 (from 1945, reader, from 1947, professor). She lectured part time in the Department of Psychology from c 1948 - c 1970, and throughout her life, was engaged in an active programme of research and publication. A committed and outspoken proponent of Scientific Humanism, she presented 2 BBC radio programmes on the subject in the 1950s, which were published in 1955 as Morals Without Religion, and Other Essays (London: Dobson, 1955).

Other published works include Humanist Anthology, from Confucius to Bertrand Russell (London: Barrie&Rockliff, 1961); Honest to Man: Christian Ethics Re-examined (London: Elek, 1974): and with her husband, Rex Knight, A Modern Introduction to Psychology (London: University Tutorial Press, 1948), 7th edn, 1966. She also edited William James, William James: a Selection from his Writings on Psychology, The Pelican Psychology Series, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950).

An appreciation of Arthur Rex Knight is given in Aberdeen University Review, 40, (1963 - 1964), 63 - 64. See also Who was Who, 1961 - 1970.

Interim arrangement as described in Scope and Content, above - listing in process.

1 file of personal papers is closed until 2113. The remainder of the collection is open, subject to signature accepting conditions of use at reader registration sheet

Bequeathed to the University in Jun 1983, by Margaret Knight.

Very brief collection level description available on Aberdeen University Library Catalogue, accessible online http://www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/library/

No copies known

Subject to the condition of the original, copies may be supplied for private research use only on receipt of a signed undertaking to comply with current copyright legislation.

Permission to make any published use of material from the collection must be sought in advance from the Head of Special Libraries and Archives (e-mail: speclib@abdn.ac.uk) and, where appropriate, from the copyright owner. Where possible, assistance will be given in identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

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