Eric Oswald Mowbray Knight (10 April 1897 – 15 January 1943) was an English author who is mainly notable for creating the fictional collie Lassie. He took American citizenship in 1942 shortly before his death.
Born on 10 April 1897, in Menston in Yorkshire, England, Eric Mowbray Knight was the third of four sons born to Frederic Harrison and Marion Hilda (née Creasser) Knight, both Quakers. His father was a rich diamond merchant who, when Eric was two years old, was killed during the Boer War. His mother then moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, to work as a governess for the imperial family. She later settled in America.
Knight had a varied career, including service in the Canadian Army during World War I and spells as an art student, newspaper reporter and Hollywood screenwriter.
He married twice, first on 28 July 1917 to Dorothy Caroline Noyes Hall with whom he had three daughters and later divorced, and secondly to Jere Brylawski on 2 December 1932.
His first novel was Song on Your Bugles (1936) about the working class in Northern England. As "Richard Hallas" he wrote the hardboiled genre novel You Play The Black and The Red Comes Up (1938). Knight's This Above All is considered one of the significant novels of The Second World War.
Knight and his second wife Jere Knight raised collies on their farm in Pleasant Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They resided at Springhouse Farm from 1939 to 1943. His novel Lassie Come-Home (ISBN 0030441013) appeared in 1940. The novel was filmed by MGM in 1943 as Lassie Come Home with Roddy McDowall in the role of Joe Carraclough and canine actor Pal in the role of Lassie. The success of the novel and film generated more films and eventually several television series, cementing Lassie's icon status. The novel remains a favourite in many reprints.
One of Knight's last books was Sam Small Flies Again, republished as The Flying Yorkshireman (Pocket Books 493, 1948; 273 pages). On the back of The Flying Yorkshireman, this blurb appeared:
| “ | England's answer to America's James Thurber or Thorne Smith, Knight created the character Sam Small, a villager from Yorkshire whose stock in trade was an endless parade of outrageous tarradiddles and tall tales. Sam's adventures are chronicled in the ten stories of this vintage volume, originally published as Sam Small Flies Again. That's right, Sam can literally fly, which puts him into all sorts of mischief. "An immensely funny book." -- The New York Times. | ” |
In 1943, at which time he was a major in the United States Army – Special Services, Knight was killed in an air crash in Dutch Guiana (now Surinam) in South America.
Famous quotes containing the word knight:
“The knight slew the dragon,
The lady was gay,
They rode on together,
Away, away.”
—Unknown. This Is the Key (l. 38–41)