Knight, CHARLES

Knight, CHARLES, author and publisher, was born in 1791. The son of a Windsor bookseller, in 1811 with his father he established the Windsor and Eton Express, and continued to edit it until 1821, at the same time printing the Etonian. The Plain Englishman (1820–22), which was the first attempt to produce cheap literature of a high tone, was jointly edited by Charles Knight and Commissioner Locker of Greenwich Hospital. Removing to London in 1822, Knight began to publish important works in various classes of literature, and he also founded Knight's Quarterly Magazine, to which Macaulay, Præd, Moultrie, and other writers of promise contributed. In 1827 he became connected with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, for which he published many valuable works and serials, including the Penny Magazine (1832–45), which attained a circulation of 200,000 copies weekly. Knight began to issue in 1838 the Penny Cyclopædia, upon which he expended for contributions alone the sum of £40,000. This was followed by the English Cyclopædia (1854–61), the British Almanac, and its Companion. Knight edited the Pictorial Shakespeare, and was the author of William Shakespeare: a Biography. He likewise issued The Land We Live In and other works. In 1853 Knight published Once Upon a Time, which consisted of a collection of papers from the periodicals; and in 1855 Knowledge is Power, a work based upon two smaller volumes—Results of Machinery and Rights of Industry—which secured a large sale at a time when the improvements in machinery excited a hostile feeling and the relations between capital and labour were considerably strained. In 1862 Knight completed his Popular History of England, upon which he had been engaged for seven years. His Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century, which appeared in 1863–65, recounted the struggles of his own life as well as gave interesting pictures of the numerous literary and political personages with whom he had been associated. Knight's compilations, Half-hours with the Best Authors, Half-hours of English History, and Half-hours with the Best Letter-writers, have become widely popular. By his appointment in 1860 as publisher of the London Gazette £1200 per annum was assured to him. He died at Addlestone, Surrey, 9th March 1873. See Life by goddaughter (1892).