Dorothy Caroline Noyes Hall (m. 1917–32, divorced) Jere Brylawski (m. 1932–43, his death)
Children
3
Eric Mowbray Knight (10 April 1897 – 15 January 1943) was an English novelist and screenwriter, who is mainly known for his 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home, which introduced the fictional collieLassie. He took American citizenship in 1942 shortly before his death.[1]
Born in Menston, West Riding of Yorkshire, Knight was the youngest of three sons born to Marion Hilda (née Creasser) and Frederic Harrison 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, Imperial Russia, to work as a governess for the imperial family. The family later settled in the United States in 1912.
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.
Knight's first novel was Invitation to Life (Greenberg, 1934).[3] The second 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. He also helped co-author the film, Battle of Britain in the "Why We Fight" Series under the direction of Frank Capra.[4]
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 ThurberorThorne 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.
^The Yale University library gazette: Volumes 65–66 Yale University. Library – 1990 "He became an American citizen in 1942, was commissioned as a captain in the Special Services, and died in an airplane crash in 1943. He was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit."
^Ducharme, by Diane J.; findingaids.feedback@yale.edu, File format. "Guide to the Eric Knight Papers". Drs.library.yale.edu. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
