Jackson Knight Letters to Professor Richardson

The collection includes two letters from Jackson Knight to Richardson and a copy of one from Richardson to Knight after reading his Penguin translation of the Aeneid. Also included is the presentation copy of the Aeneid which Knight sent to Richardson.

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. He retired from teaching in 1961. His biography, by his brother George Wilson Knight, was published in 1975.

Professor Leopold John Dixon Richardson was the author of a number of books on classics published 1926-1952, and was sometime Secretary of the Classical Association.

Usual EUL arrangements apply.

Description compiled by Ian Mortimer, Archivist, 18 Mar 2002. Hub description entered by Charlotte Berry, Archivist, 9 September 2003.

Unlisted.

Usual EUL arrangements apply.

The collection was deposited by a member of the University College Cardiff.