Charles Anthony Knight

Charles A. Knight, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Massachusetts Boston, passed away on January 31st, 2025 in Livingston, New Jersey. Charles was a caring and devoted husband and father, a dedicated teacher, an insightful scholar and a great lover of music and the arts.  He will be greatly missed. 

Charles was born in 1937 in San Francisco and lived in New Orleans as a young child.  He grew up in Middletown, Connecticut and attended Woodrow Wilson High School from which he graduated in 1954.  His father, Harry C. Knight, was a physician who served in the US Public Health Service until the end of World War II and later opened a private practice in Middletown. His mother, Antoinette D. Burr, briefly attended Duke University and served for many years as secretary in the English Department at Wesleyan.  Charles’s younger brother Donald, known professionally as Dudley Knight, was a noted actor, voice coach, and professor of speech and drama at UC Irvine.

Charles attended Haverford College, where he studied English literature, participated in theatrical productions and played on the fencing and cricket teams.  It was at Haverford that he met Katherine Kohlhas, a Bryn Mawr student cast as his spouse in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Life followed the lead of art. The two were married in Chappaqua, New York in December 1958 and stayed together for the next 66 years until Charles’s death.

After graduating from Haverford in 1958, Charles entered the Ph.D program in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and received his doctorate in 1964.  His first teaching position was at Catholic University of America in 1961-62.  From there he moved on to the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  When plans were announced to open a new UMass campus in downtown Boston, Charles seized the opportunity and became a founding faculty member of the new University in the fall of 1965.  The Knights settled in Newton, Mass where they lived for the next fifty years. 

By the time of their move to Newton, Charles and Kathy had four children, Chris (1959), Nathaniel (1961), Jenny (1962) and Lucy (1964).   It was a lively and rambunctious family, and Charles was at its heart, filling the house with songs, games, wry humor, and his inimitable humming.  As the years went on the family came to appreciate his tolerance, generosity and wisdom as he and Kathy faced the challenges of parenting teenagers in the 1970s.   A sabbatical year spent in England in 1971-72 was a particular highlight, endowing the family with a wealth of formative experiences and shared memories.

At the University, Charles advanced along a successful career path.  After returning from sabbatical in 1972 he served in the administration, first as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and then as acting Dean in 1975-76.  He was chair of the English Department from 1978 to 1982 and led the University’s Faculty Council for a time in the 1990s.  He was tenured in 1970 and promoted to full Professor in 1979.  He taught courses in his specialty of eighteenth-century English literature as well as thematic courses on topics such as the Rise of the Novel and Satire.  He was a popular teacher whose courses left a lasting impression on his students.

In his scholarly work Charles explored the theme of satire which he developed in articles on the writings of Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and other eighteenth century literary figures.  He was particularly known for his work on Joseph Addison and Richard Steele and their journal The Spectator.  In 1994, he published a comprehensive multilingual bibliography of the literature on Addison and Steele, the only such work available at the time. After retiring from UMass Boston in 2002, Charles turned to his major scholarly work, The Literature of Satire, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2004.  Plans for a literary mystery novel were sidetracked when he was commissioned by Pickering and Chatto to write a biography for its Eighteenth-Century Political Biography series on Richard Steele. The book came out in 2009 and was soon followed by a second commission for a biography of Joseph Addison.  Work on the new book, however, was hindered by poor health, and Charles elected to pass the project on to another author.  

Alongside his academic life, Charles was a long-time participant in movements for peace and justice.  He was an early supporter of the civil rights movement speaking out publicly in support of desegregation in a letter published in the Hartford Courant in 1960. When US involvement in Vietnam heated up in the mid-1960s, Charles and Kathy threw themselves into the anti-war movement.  Charles’s opposition to the war and his dedication to social justice were deeply rooted in his religious faith.  He and Kathy had both converted to Catholicism in college and he remained devoted to the Church throughout his life.  As the anti-war movement gained momentum, he and Kathy founded, with a group of like-minded Catholics, the Mass Catholic Peace Committee, and much of their anti-war activism took place under its banner.  Civil disobedience played a prominent role in their struggle.  Charles and Kathy knew and supported the Berrigan brothers and other prominent Catholic activists.  On several occasions, Charles himself was arrested for taking part in sit-ins at draft boards and other minor offenses   After the Vietnam war ended, Charles continued to participate in social justice causes, and he supported Kathy in her career as a peace activist. 

Beyond his political commitments, Charles was deeply engaged in culture and the life of the mind.  A dedicated classical music aficionado, he rarely let a week pass without attending a performance. His interests were broad and inclusive—from renaissance and baroque to contemporary classic composers—and he was always seeking new works off the beaten path.  He even ventured into jazz from time to time and had a soft spot for bluegrass and the Beatles.  Music was a constant presence in the Knight household.  Charles also appreciated the visual arts.  He held memberships in most of the major museums in the Boston area and rarely missed a new exhibit.  He enjoyed theatre as well, especially when his brother Don was among the cast. 

Charles and Kathy sold their house in Newton in 2015 and moved to New Jersey to be closer to their children.  He spent his final years under the care of his daughter, Jenny, and son-in-law, Ben Frisch.  

Charles is survived by his wife Kathy and by his four children, eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren. 

A visiting hour will begin at 9 AM on Sat Feb 8 in St. Ignatius Church on Commonwealth Avenue in Chestnut Hill followed by his Mass of Christian Burial at 10AM.

Interment will be private.

Donations in lieu of flowers may be made in his memory to Oxfam America and Doctors without Borders.