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.
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.
[2] The classical scholar William Francis Jackson Knight (1895–1964), of whom he wrote a biography, was his brother.
[citation needed] At Toronto, Knight produced and acted in the main Shakespearian tragedies at Hart House Theatre.
[2] In the assessment of Jim Walsh, who studied English at Leeds 1948–53 and later became the University's registrar, in Walsh's first year "Wilson Knight dominated the scene as far as I and a lot of other students were concerned",[4]: 105 but "to be at close quarters with the man was quite different.