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.
From the guide to the Papers of William Francis Jackson Knight, 1920-1965, (University of Exeter)
