of 'Notes and Queries,' and retained that office for life. In that capacity he indulged his versatile antiquarian and literary tastes and formed many new acquaintances. On 4 May 1893 he was elected F.S.A.
With strong affinities for Bohemian life, Knight was long a leading member of the Arundel Club. But after 1883, when he was elected to the Garrick Club (3 March), his leisure was mainly spent there. He was an ideal club companion, convivial, chivalric, and cultured. With actors and actresses he maintained cordial relations without prejudicing his critical independence. On 4 July 1905 the dramatic profession entertained him, as the oldest living dramatic critic, to dinner at the Savoy Hotel. Sir Henry Irving took the chair, and M. Coquelin and Madame Réjane were among the guests.
Knight was an ardent book collector through life, but twice he was under the necessity of parting with his collection — on the second occasion in 1905. He died at his house, 27 Camden Square, on 23 June 1907, and was buried in Highgate cemetery.
He married at the parish church, Leeds, on 3 June 1856, Rachel (d. 1911), youngest daughter of John Wilkinson of Gledhall Mount near Leeds. He had issue a son Philip Sidney, b. 2 Feb. 1857, now in Australia, and two daughters, Mrs. Ian Forbes Robertson and Mrs. Mansel Sympson of Lincoln. A posthumous portrait in oils by Miss Margaret Grose was presented to the Garrick Club in 1912 by Knight's friend Mr. H. B. Wheatley. A coloured chalk drawing by Leslie Ward is dated June 1905. William Bell Scott designed a book plate for Knight, embodying his likeness, in 1881.
Besides the books mentioned Knight published in 1893 'Theatrical Notes 1874-1879,' a collection of articles on the drama from the 'Athenæum,' and he edited in 1883 Downes's 'Roscius Anglicanus.'
[The Times, 24 June 1907; Athenæum, June 1907; Notes and Queries, 29 June 1907; J. Collins Francis, Notes by the Way, 1909, pp. i-xliii (pp. xl-xliii contain a full list of Knight's contributions to this Dictionary); V. Rendall, Some Reminiscences of Joseph Knight (Nineteenth Cent., Dec. 1911); personal knowledge.]
KNOWLES, Sir JAMES THOMAS (1831–1908), founder and editor of the 'Nineteenth Century' and architect, born at Reigate, Surrey, on 13 Oct. 1831, was eldest child in the family of two sons and three daughters of James Thomas Knowles, architect, by his wife Susanna, daughter of Dr. Brown. About 1839 his father built for himself a large house in Clapham Park, and there or in the near neighbourhood Knowles lived till 1884.
After education at University fellow, London, Knowles entered his father's office and spent some time in studying architecture in Italy. He published a prize essay on 'Architectural Education' in 1852, became an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1853, and a fellow in 1870. Knowles practised his profession with success for some thirty years. He built, according to his own account, 'many hundreds of houses, besides several churches, hospitals, clubs, warehouses, stores, roads, and bridges.' His chief commissions were three churches in Clapham (St. Stephen's, St. Saviour's, and St. Philip's), Albert Mansions, Victoria Street, The Thatched House Club in St. James's Street in 1865, and Sir Erasmus Wilson's enlargement of the Sea Bathing Hospital at Margate in 1882. Baron Albert Grant [q. v. Suppl. I] was at one time a client. In 1873 Knowles designed a palatial residence for Baron Grant which was erected in Kensington High Street on the site of demolished slums, but the house was never occupied and was pulled down in 1883, when its place was taken by Kensington Court. In 1874, too, when Baron Grant purchased Leicester Square with a view to converting it into a public open space, he entrusted Knowles with the task of laying out the ground, and of adorning it architecturally.
But Knowles's activity and alertness of mind always ranged beyond the limits of his professional work. A little volume, compiled from the 'Morte d'Arthur' of Sir Thomas Malory, 'The Story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which he published in 1862, reached an eighth edition in 1895, and met with Tennyson's approval. In contributions to the magazines and periodicals he showed a varied interest in literary and philosophic questions, and he grew ambitious of the acquaintance of leaders of public opinion. In 1866 he called on Tennyson at Freshwater and became an intimate for life. He designed for the poet without charge his new house at Aldworth in 1869.
Early in the same year, when Knowles was entertaining Tennyson and a neighbour, Charles Pritchard [q. v.], at his house at Clapham, the possibility was canvassed of forming a representative 'theological society' for determining in discusson the bases of morality. With characteristic energy Knowles communicated with
