K nolles, R ichard

Abstract

Richard Knolles (late 1540s–1610), historian and translator, was born in Northamptonshire and attended Oxford University, beginning his studies at Lincoln College in about 1560. He became a fellow of the college and remained there in that capacity until at least 1572. Knolles then left Oxford to take up a post as master of the grammar school founded at Sandwich in 1563 by his patron, Sir Roger Manwood. After Sir Roger died in 1592, his son Sir Peter Manwood, who was well connected among the leading scholars and antiquaries of the time, encouraged Knolles to write and probably helped him obtain books and source materials from Robert Cotton and others. Under Sir Peter's patronage, Knolles completed three major works: he wrote The generall historie of the Turkes , published in 1603; and he subsequently produced two lengthy translations – of Jean Bodin's De la république and of William Camden's historical and topographical survey of Britain and Ireland, Britannia . Knolles never married and is not known to have travelled outside of England. He died in 1610, but may have lived just long enough to learn that Philemon Holland's translation of Camden's Britannia was to be printed and that his own was therefore likely to languish in manuscript. Knolles's reputation rests primarily on his Generall historie of the Turkes , a monumental work of narrative synthesis that reached almost 1,200 pages in its first folio edition of 1603. It was admired by Samuel Johnson, who (in The Rambler , 18 May 1751) praised its style as ‘pure, nervous, elevated, and clear’, and it was a favourite of Lord Byron who, writing shortly before his death at Missolonghi in 1824, declared, ‘Old Knolles was one of the first books that gave me pleasure when I was a child; and I believe it had much influence on my future wishes to visit the Levant, and gave perhaps the Oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry.’