Jackson Knight letters to Edith Bonner ne Rogerson

This file contains letters from Jackson Knight to Edith Bonner, mainly concerning her contributions to a classical dictionary, but also of a more general nature. Included are notes by Edith Bonner giving additional information to the context in which the letters were written.

William Francis Jackson Knight (1895-1964), classical scholar, the elder son of George Knight and Caroline Louisa Jackson, was born on 20 October 1895. He was educated at Dulwich College and Hertford College Oxford, to which he won an open scholarship in Classics. He served as a despatch rider during the First World War. After a number of teaching jobs, including ten years at All Saints' School, Bloxham, he became a temporary lecturer in Classics at the University of St Andrews. The following year he accepted an Assistant Lectureship at Exeter, which he turned to a Lectureship the next year and a Readership in 1942. He remained at Exeter, a committed educationalist who inspired hundreds of students, until and after he retired. His publications included several works on Virgil, including Vergil's Troy (1932), Cummaean Gates (1936), Accentual Symmetry in Vergil (1939), Roman Vergil (1943), Vergil and Homer (1950), and Virgil's Aeneid, a translation (Penguin Classics, 1956). In addition he played a key role in extra-mural activities, encouraging young poets and establishing and commanding the University's Officer Training Corps. He established the international review Erasmus. His biography, by his brother George Wilson Knight, was published in 1975.

Edith Rogerson (later Bonner) read Greek at the University of Exeter and graduated in 1960. She attended Jackson Knight's lectures on epic. On the suggestion of Knight, she contributed an entry on Plotinus for a classical dictionary which later published by Penguin, with entries on Proclus and Porphyry.

Usual EUL arrangements apply.

Biographical details on Knight compiled by Ian Mortimer, Archivist.

Listed by Charlotte Berry, Archivist, 10 October 2003 and encoded into EAD 1 June 2004.

Currently unlisted.

Usual EUL restrictions apply.

Donated to the University Library in Jan 1984.

Exeter University Library also holds the following collections relating to William Jackson Knight and to his brother George Wilson Knight: EUL MS 54, 75, 80, 84, 87, 89, 93, 94, 185 and 191. Other papers relating to Jackson Knight are also held by the following repositories: Leeds University, Bodleian Library and University College London.

Unknown.