Eric Knight

Eric Knight was born in 1897 in Menston, in Yorkshire, England, the youngest of three sons in a Quaker family. His father, a wealthy diamond merchant, was killed during the Boer War when Eric was two, and his mother went to work as a governess in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The family settled in the United States in 1912. During the First World War Knight served as a signaller with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and both of his brothers were killed in the war. Afterward he worked as an art student, newspaper reporter and Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote novels about Yorkshire, and in 1938 he published a short story in The Saturday Evening Post about a loyal collie who makes a long journey home to the boy who loves her; he expanded it into the novel Lassie Come-Home (1940), which was made into a popular film in 1943. Knight became an American citizen in 1942. Serving as an officer in the United States Army during the Second World War, he was killed in a plane crash in Dutch Guiana (Suriname) in 1943.

Eric Knight is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Born to Quaker parents; his own adult beliefs are not well documented. Source: Wikipedia