Ellis Cornelia Knight

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ECK , whose life was lived close to some makers of history during the French Revolutionary period and later, indulged her scholarly or literary bent in unusual or pioneering genres: a sequel to Samuel Johnson 's Rasselas, a historical novel set during the Roman Empire, and a travelogue with her own illustrations. She also published poems, another historical novel, translations, and pedagogical works, and left unpublished her diaries and incomplete autobiography.
Photograph of the painting of Ellis Cornelia Knight bywearing Angellica Kauffman. Knight is seated at a desk or table bearing books, papers, and a quill pen in inkstand. She has her left elbow propped up on the desk and another pen in her right hand. She is a simple white dress and blue shawl, with a black belt at her high waist fastened with a cameo. Her dark, curly hair, held by a headband, falls below her shoulders. Her expression is meditative. Manchester Art Gallery.

Milestones

27 March 1757

ECK was born in Westminster, the only child of Sir Joseph Knight and his second wife, the former Philippina Deane .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Luttrell, Barbara. The Prim Romantic. Chatto and Windus.
17

By June 1790

ECK published her first work, Dinarbas, a novel which acts as a continuation of Samuel Johnson 's Rasselas.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Kolb, Gwin J. “Forward”. Dinarbas, Colleagues Press.
vii
“Review of Dinarbas by Ellis Cornelia Knight”. The Analytical Review, Vol.
7
, J. Johnson, pp. 189-91.
189

21 April 1792

ECK published an epistolary historical novel in two volumes called Marcus Flaminius, with a dedication to Horace Walpole , who had recently become Earl of Orford.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 568
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

17 December 1837 or soon afterwards

ECK died in Paris of an inflammation of the Lungs.
Sources differ as to her death date. The Oxford Dictionary of Naional Biography gives it as 17 December. Her biographer Barbara Luttrell quotes a doctor saying she died on the 18th, while herself dating the death as two weeks after Knight fell ill and three months short of her eightieth birthday, which would put it a couple of days later still.
Luttrell, Barbara. The Prim Romantic. Chatto and Windus.
221

Biography

Birth

27 March 1757

ECK was born in Westminster, the only child of Sir Joseph Knight and his second wife, the former Philippina Deane .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Luttrell, Barbara. The Prim Romantic. Chatto and Windus.
17

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