E. V. Knox

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Edmund George Valpy Knox (May 10, 1881 – January 2, 1971), was a poet and satirist who wrote under the pseudonym Evoe. He was editor of Punch 1932-1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years.

He was son of Edmund Arbuthnott Knox. He was brother of priest and author Ronald Knox and of codebreaker Dilly Knox.

His first marriage was in 1912 to Christina Frances Hicks, born 1885. They had children Penelope Fitzgerald (born 1916, died 2000) and Edmund Rawle Valpy Knox (journalist, died 5 June 1994). Christina died in 1935. He remarried in 1937, to Mary Shepard, daughter of E.H. Shepard, illustrator of Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows.

He served in the Lincolnshire Regiment during the First World War and Punch reported in October 1917 that he had been wounded.

As a poet, he was noted for his ability to provide topical satirical poems for Punch in the style of well-known contemporary poets such as John Drinkwater, John Masefield, Walter de la Mare, Edmund Blunden, Robert Bridges and J. C. Squire - usually managing to evoke the poet's general style and manner without resorting to parodying any particular poem.

Although best known for satire, some of his more serious poems, written during the Second World War while he held the editor's chair at Punch, evoke by turns wistful nostalgia, grim determination and a longing for eventual peace, often using metres from Greek or Latin poetry or historical English forms.

[edit] Books

Collections of Evoe's writings, usually reprinted from the pages of Punch, were published as follows:

• The Brazen Lyre (1911)
• Parodies Regained (1921)
• These Liberties (1923)
• Fiction as She is Wrote (1923)
• Poems of Impudence (1926)
• It Occurs to Me (1926)
• I'll Tell the World (1928)
• Wonderful Outings (1928)
• Here's Misery! (1928)
• This Other Eden (1929)
• Fancy Now
• Quaint Specimens
• Awful Occasions
• Gorgeous Times
• Things that Annoy Me
• Slight Irritations
• Folly Calling (1932)
• Blue Feathers
• An Hour from Victoria
• A Little Loot
• In My Old Days (1969)

[edit] References

• Penelope Fitzgerald, The Knox Brothers, New York: Coward, McCann, & Geoghegan, 1977; revised edition, Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2000.