Guide to the Papers of Stephen Knight
MS 9336
National Library of Australia View Catalogue Record
Collection Summary
- Creator
- Stephen Knight
- Title
- Papers of Stephen Knight
- Date Range
- 1977-1991
- Collection Number
- MS 9336
- Extent
- 0.7 metres (5 boxes)
- Language of Materials
- English
- Repository
- National Library of Australia
Introduction
Scope and Contents
The collection comprises correspondence, articles, and typescript drafts of stories, reviews, and other papers relating to Knight's book The selling of the Australian mind (1990)and his collections of crime short stories, including Dead witness (1989), Crimes for a summer Christmas (1990), A corpse at the opera house (1992). There is also an unpublished manuscript entitled 'Radical reader 2'.
The correspondents include Michael Wilding, Raymond Southall, Peter Corris, Steve Wright, Janette Turner Hospital, Martin Long, Robert Hood, Mudrooroo, Caroline Lurie and Allen & Unwin.
Conditions Governing Access
Please refer to the collection's catalogue record for the access conditions (http://nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn1762258).
Conditions Governing Use
Copying and publishing of unpublished manuscript material is subject to copyright restrictions. For such material, written permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder(s). Copying of unpublished material for research purposes is permissible 50 years after the death of the creator of the material.
Preferred Citation
Items from this collection should be cited as '[Title or description of manuscript item], Papers of Stephen Knight, National Library of Australia, MS 9336, [box number and series and/or file number]'.
Provenance
These papers were purchased by the Library from Stephen Knight in 1992.
Biographical Note
Stephen Knight was born on 21 September 1940 an educated at Bournemouth Grammar School and the University of Oxford. He was appointed Teaching Fellow at the University of Sydney in 1963 and lecturer in English in 1964. In 1968-69 he was lecturer in English at the Australian National University. He returned to the University of Sydney in 1970 where he was successively Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor. In 1987 he was appointed Robert Wallace Professor of English at the University of Melbourne. In 1992 Knight returned to England to take up a chair at the De Montfort University at Leicester.
Most of Stephen Knight's scholarly writings have been in the area of medieval English literature. They include The structure of Sir Thomas Malory's Arthuriad (1970), Rymyng craftily; form and meaning in Chaucer's poetry (1973), The poetry of the Canterbury Tales (1974), Arthurian literature and society (1984) and Geoffrey Chaucer (1986).
Knight has also had a long interest in crime fiction. He was the author of Form and ideology in crime fiction (1980) and Continent of mystery; a thematic history of Australian crime fiction (1997). Between 1989 and 1992 he edited four anthologies of Australian crime stories.
Item Descriptions
Series 1. 'Radical Reader 2'
Correspondence and other papers for 'Radical Reader 2', a proposed sequel to The radical reader, edited by Stephen Knight and Michael Wilding (Wild & Wooley, 1977).
The project was abandoned.
Series 2. Dead witness
Photocopies of corrected proofs of stories published in the anthology Dead witness: best Australian mystery stories, edited by Stephen Knight (Penguin books, 1989)
Draft introduction and notes for Dead Witness. Photocopies of seven stories written by Mary Fortune under her pseudonym 'Waif Wander' from the Australian Journal are also included (File 7) - Box 2
'Twenty six years ago'
'Fourteen days on the road'
'Looking for lodgings'
'How I spent Christmas'
'Down Bourke Street'
'Touzer & Co'
'The spider and the fly'
Series 3. The selling of the Australian mind
The selling of the Australian mind was a volume of essays on Australian society published by Heinemann in 1990. The series includes galleys and corrected typescripts.
Series 4. Crimes for a summer Christmas
Crimes for a summer Christmas, edited by Stephen Knight, was published in 1990.
The series includes correspondence, reviews, clean and corrected typescripts. Some of the typescripts were not used in the book.
Series 5. More crimes for a summer Christmas
Included in this series are typescripts, the draft introduction, a review and correspondence for Morecrimes for a summer Christmas, edited by Stephen Knight (Allen & Unwin, 1991).
The correspondents include Peter Corris, Caroline Lurie, Susan Geason, Martin Long, Jessica Anderson, Mudrooroo and Rosemary Creswell.
Series 6. A corpse at the Opera House
This series includes correspondence and typescripts relating to A corpse at the Opera House: a crimes for a summer Christmas anthology, edited by Stephen Knight (Allen & Unwin, 1992).
The correspondents include Robert Hood, Martin Long, Jon Cleary, Janette Turner Hospital, Steve Wright, Claire McNab and Patrick Gallagher of Allen and Unwin.