G. Wilson Knight

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]

• Myth and Miracle: an Essay on the Mystic Symbolism of Shakespeare (1929)
• The Wheel of Fire, Interpretations of Shakespearian Tragedy (1930)
• The Imperial Theme (1931)
• The Shakespearian Tempest (1932)
• The Christian Renaissance, with interpretations of Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe, and a note on T. S. Eliot (1933)
• Shakespeare and Tolstoy (1934)
• Principles of Shakespeare's Production (1936)
• Atlantic Crossing: an Autobiographical Design (1936)
• The Burning Oracle, Studies in the Poetry of Action (1939)
• The Sceptred Isle: Shakespeare's Message for England at War (1940)
• The Starlit Dome: Studies in the Poetry of Vision (1941)
• Chariot of Wrath: the Message of John Milton to Democracy at War (1942)
• The Olive and the Sword: a Study of England's Shakespeare (1944)
• The Dynasty of Stowe (1945)
• Hiroshima, on Prophecy and the sun-bomb (1946)
• The Crown of Life: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Final Plays (1947)
• Christ and Nietzsche: an Essay in Poetic Wisdom (1948)
• The Imperial Theme: Further Interpretations of Shakespeare's Tragedies, including the Roman Plays (1951)
• Lord Byron: Christian Virtues (1952)
• Byron's Dramatic Prose (1953)
• The Last of the Incas, a Play on the Conquest of Peru (1954)
• Laureate of Peace: on the Genius of Alexander Pope (1954)
• The Mutual Flame: on Shakespeare's Sonnets and The Phoenix and the Turtle (1955)
• Lord Byron's Marriage: The Evidence of Asterisks (1957)
• The Sovereign Flower: on Shakespeare as the poet of Royalism (1958)
• Ibsen (1962)
• The Golden Labyrinth: a Study of British Drama (1962)
• Byron and Hamlet (1962)
• The Saturnian Quest: a Chart of the Prose Works of John Cowper Powys (1964)
• Byron and Shakespeare (1966)
• Gold-Dust, with Other Poetry (1968)
• Shakespeare and Religion: Essays of Forty Years
• Neglected Powers: Essays on 19th and 20th Century Literature (1971)
• Jackson Knight: a Biography (1975)
• Virgil and Shakespeare (1977)
• Shakespeare's Dramatic Challenge: on the Rise of Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes (1977)
• Symbol of Man: on Body-soul for Stage and Studio (1979)
• Shakespearian Dimensions (1984)
• Visions and Vices: Essays on John Cowper Powys (1989)

• Wheel of fire

• Papers of George Wilson Knight: 'Road to Kasvin' typescript memoir
• G. Wilson Knight
• Archival material at Leeds University Library
• G. Wilson Knight Collection at the Harry Ransom Center