KNOWLES, Reginald Lionel – English Illustrator, 1879-1950.
Reginald Knowles was borm at Poplar in east London, the second son of Ebenezer Caleb Knowles and Emma Dece Scutt. Along with his brothers, Charles and Horace Knowles, Reginald attended the Craft School in Aidgate, and when he left school, probably shortly before 1900, he became an artist for the publishing house of J.M. Dent.
Knowles’ most easily recognized and regularly appreciated work is the decoration of the Everyman’s Library, the first fifty volumes of which were published in 1906. The endpapers of each volume, printed in pale grey-green, show the draped figure of Good Deeds, the sister of Knowledge, facing a scroll of the latter’s address to Everyman:
Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide. In thy most need to go by thy side”
— and the pages are filled with swirling floral decorations in the art nouveau style. The title-pages and frontispieces have elaborate floral borders, designs which are clearly derived from the work of William Morris and Laurence Housman, and the flat spines are decorated with a trellis of winding flowers and have hand drawn titles, Knowles’ designs were used for thirty years until 1935, when the hand-drawn lettering on the title-pages was replaced by typeset titling in Eric Gill’s Peipetua Roman face, and the elaborate decorations were removed in favour of a series of small abstract designs by Eric Ravilious.
Apart from his work for the Everyman’s Library, Knowles drew not only lettering for the spines of a great many of Dent’s general publications but also the title-pages and other decorations. He designed bindings for several publishers as well as for Dent (including commissions from George Newnes, Jarrolds, Cassell, and George Allen), recognizable by their sumptuous gold-blocked, highly decorated front boards. At the time of his death in 1950 he was working on a design for a series of books to be published by Frederick Muller.
In addition to the huge number of books which he designed and decorated, Knowles also worked as an illustrator, sometimes in colour but mostly in black and white. Many of his illustrations are too static and, though some are quite effective, such as those he did for My River (1947), they are often too derivative to be really successful. His Old-World Love Stories (1913) has many coloured plates and other decorations, a typical “Knowles” binding design, and is a splendid production.
Knowles was an important figure in the second rank of book designers and made a considerable contribution to the concept of producing good-looking, carefully made books for a mass audience.
Source: The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators, Alan Horne.
Books illustrated by Reginald Knowles include:
- H. Lee: Legends from Fairyland (with Horace Knowles) (Freemantle, 1907)
- G.W. Dasent, trans.: Norse Fairy Tales (with Horace Knowles*) (Freemantle, 1910)
- Marie de France: Old-World Love Stories (Dent, 1913)
- E. Sutton: The Happy Isles (Dent, 1938)
- P. Strong: The Round of the World (Muller, 1945)
- W. Brown: My River (Muller, 1947), Angler’s Almanac (Muller, 1949).
