00:00:00
00:00:01
Golden Age Author Ronald Knox
147 Plays20 days ago
Priest. Author. Creator of mystery's "ten commandments". Original member of the Detection Club. Ronald Knox was an early influence on the mystery genre, yet his writing is not widely known. In today's episode, Brook and Sarah discuss their theories on why as they explore the life and work of this mystery pioneer.
Discussed
“Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” (1912) Ronald A. Knox
The Viaduct Murders (1925) Ronald A. Knox
"The Adventure of the First Class Carriage" (1947) Ronald A. Knox
A Book of Acrostics (1924) Ronald A. Knox
The Life of Right Reverend Ronald Knox (1959) Evelyn Waugh
War of the Worlds (1938 broadcast) Orson Welles
The Footsteps at the Loch (1928) Ronald A. Knox
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Transcript
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Transcript
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Hi, Brooke. Hi, Sarah. Today we're going to expand on our series of Golden Age authors. That's right. We're going to be discussing Ronald Knox, who was one of the founders of the detection club. Brooke, how much do you know about Mr. Knox?
00:00:39
Speaker
Before preparing for this episode, I knew virtually nothing except that he was the ah creator of the Ten Commandments of mystery fiction. And that is basically where my knowledge ended. And it's been really interesting learning about him.
00:00:57
Speaker
I agree, fascinating man with a fascinating life, and I'll just begin with a little bio on him. While his name may not be familiar with many mystery fans, Ronald R. Butternut Knox's impact on the mystery genre is significant. His fiction bibliography is relatively short by most standards, with only six novels and three short stories, as well as a few collaborations with other authors.
00:01:21
Speaker
But he is credited with articulating the Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction and was a pioneer of Sherlockian studies. In honor of his ten rules, I thought we could discuss ten facts about him. So the first is that he was born February 17, 1888, in Kibworth, Leicestershire, where his father held a post in the Anglican Church. He was the youngest of six children.
00:01:44
Speaker
Second, his family was incredibly accomplished. His father and grandfather were Anglican bishops. His eldest brother was an author and editor of Punch magazine. Another brother was a code breaker during both of the world wars. One of his sisters was an author of 25 books and his niece won the Booker Prize. I just want to jump in, Sarah. What an amazing family. Like, I i don't know what it would be like to be surrounded by all that.
00:02:12
Speaker
Well, I think he would feel some pressure to be pretty high achieving. Absolutely.
00:02:19
Speaker
Number three, he was very well educated. He studied at Eaton and Oxford where he received several scholarships for his academic achievements. He returned to Oxford as a chaplain first while he was an Anglican priest and then again after he converted to Catholicism.
00:02:37
Speaker
Four, the First World War influenced his decision to convert. When it broke out, he was an Anglican priest. Shortly after it finished, and he had lost many of his friends to the war, he was ordained as a Catholic one. Later in his life, he would work with the Pope.
00:02:54
Speaker
5. Knox was a pioneer in Sherlock Holmes studies, with his 1912 article, Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes. The article analyzes several themes in Doyle's work, organizes several Holmes pieces in chronological order, and offers a biography of the detective. Knox had carefully studied his subject, and his admiration was lifelong.
00:03:17
Speaker
His mystery, The Viaduct Murders, includes several references to the detective, and in 1947, Strand Magazine published a short story featuring Holmes, written by Knox. Six. He enjoyed puzzles and wordplay. He published a book of acrostics in 1924, and his mystery, The Viaduct Murder, features a code. According to Martin Edwards, Knox also worked with his code-breaking brother during the First World War.
00:03:43
Speaker
7. His crime writing wasn't necessarily religious, but it does feature references that are inspired by religious text. He also wrote extensively on religion, though eventually his bishop asked him to cease crime writing because it wasn't an appropriate activity for a priest.
00:04:00
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah, there's a story actually that he had he had a ah close friendship with a woman and ah they must have been traveling together. She did not like his fifth book and threw it over a cruise ship like ledge. um And then he didn't write anything more from that. I guess that criticism was just enough. One bad review.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, coupled with being told, like, this is not appropriate for the for the work that you do to be to be writing crime fiction. I do think it's a shame that he was advised to stop writing, because according to his biography written by Evelyn Waugh, and he's speaking here about his detective books, Ronald regarded these books, as he did his acrostics, as intellectual exercises, a game between writer and reader in which a problem was precisely stated and elaborately disguised.
00:04:59
Speaker
He was not seeking to write novels. He had no concern with the passions of the murderer, the terror of the victim, or the moral enormity of the crime. He eschewed psychology, violence, the occult, and the macabre. I think that perhaps that official in the Catholic Church maybe just didn't understand what Ronald Knox was trying to do.
00:05:20
Speaker
And, you know, crime fiction authors in general, because I don't think by and large any of them or us are that interested in the murderer or, you know, the crime. It's the it's the puzzle and the the challenge to figure out that puzzle. And um I think that summed it up so well. He inspired Orson Welles' work War of the Worlds.
00:05:46
Speaker
In 1926, he performed a solo radio broadcast where he spoke of a revelation occurring in London. The broadcast included very realistic sounding sound effects and caused some panic among listeners because of the political climate at the time.
00:06:01
Speaker
Number nine, he participated in the detection club's first round robin mystery. In 1930, Knox, along with five other members of the detection club, broadcast on BBC a mystery that they penned together. Behind the screen aired on six consecutive Sundays, each section read by its author. And finally, number 10, Ronald Knox died of cancer on August 24th, 1957.
00:06:27
Speaker
Sarah, that was such a fun way to learn about Ronald Knox, as you said at the top in honor of his 10 commandments of detection fiction. So thank you for sharing that. One of the things that jumped out at me is that he is sort of the first Sherlockian and what a giant realm of Sherlockians we still have to this day. And and he sort of kicked that off, didn't he?
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, so his his um essay, it was it was published, I think, in 1912. But I think he actually ah read it at a couple of public gatherings in 1911. And Arthur Conan Doyle expressed surprise. I think that someone would i take the time to analyze his work in that way. Because if you remember, Arthur Conan Doyle didn't He didn't really love his Sherlock work. He kind of did it because it paid the bills, but it it wasn't his his passion. um And so, yeah, I think he was a bit surprised that someone took his work so seriously, ah but Knox did. And as you say, he really kicked off decades worth of study of this amazing character. Yeah. And one point that I read is in some of these essays he wrote on Sherlock Holmes.
00:07:47
Speaker
and Watson, he treated them as if they were actual people. and and I remember that we talked about the fact that there were people in that time period who assumed that Sherlock Holmes was real. and i I just wonder how much that um work contributed to those ideas that you could go to that address and that's where Sherlock Holmes worked.
00:08:11
Speaker
you know ha We'll include a link to the article in the show notes because it is worth reading. It's ah it's quite a detailed analysis of the um the character. That's wonderful. I'm fascinated by the radio hoax because it was so realistic and he reported that there had been the hanging of several people, that there was quote-unquote revolution in London,
00:08:39
Speaker
The houses of Parliament and the clock tower had been destroyed. It's no wonder that he created panic. And then I also read that a subsequent snowstorm meant that the newspapers couldn't get out immediately, which caused people to believe that it was because of the revolution and and that they weren't getting the news, but it also prevented them from hearing that this was just a satirical hoax.
00:09:04
Speaker
huh But isn't it interesting that a priest would kind of be willing to do this controversial, um I mean, it was a lie, right? But it was, I'm sure he had a good reason for this. I'm sure it had a message behind it because that's kind of what these things do. But ah just super interesting that he was willing to go that far.
00:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, and as you say, like I think his intention was that it was satire, yeah right? he wasn't um I think the difference with ah War of the Worlds is I'm not sure that it was intended to be satire. It was meant to be entertainment, for sure. But um you know I think that panic that resulted from that, I think Wells kind of enjoyed that. But I got the impression that Ronald Knox was a pretty playful kind of man and that, you know, I can just imagine him really enjoying the experience of performing that broadcast because he did all of the sound effects with, you know, the explosions and, you know,
00:10:13
Speaker
crushing up the paper and stomping on things to to you know simulate this revolution that he was reporting that had happened. And then I think he just like went off and had dinner and and kind of didn't realize what he had created. I'm sure he didn't he didn't set out to create the panic that ah that it created.
00:10:36
Speaker
Right. I think your um observation that he was playful is 100% true. And I didn't fully appreciate because I, as I said, did not know about Ronald Knox before. I didn't appreciate that a priest was who wrote the Ten Commandments of mystery fiction.
00:11:02
Speaker
and then knowing that he enjoyed this kind of satirical um twist on things. I think that we can look at that list and be quite sure that he never meant for it to be taken you know as the gospel, so to speak. And there are a lot of people who misunderstand that. This was meant to be facetious and playful and sort of um maybe given a wink and a nod to all his fellow ah mystery authors. I think you're absolutely correct, Brooke. And he wasn't the first person who tried to create a set of rules or structure around detective fiction. I think there were a couple of other attempts, but the fact that he framed it as the Ten Commandments
00:11:48
Speaker
And, you know, probably the fact that he was a priest and I think he was quite well known for his religious writing as well. hu Lended it some credibility and and um so his work became kind of that rules of detective fiction that um that we talk about. But I think you're right. I think he, ah what again, wasn't intending for people to read those and follow them to the tee. I think it was really just like, you know, as you say, nodding to some of his contemporaries, because I think he, you know, spent a fair amount of time with ah the other members of the detection club. Certainly they um
00:12:30
Speaker
wrote together ah you know in multiple instances. they And they did that um that BBC production that I talked about. ah you know So I can imagine that he he enjoyed spending time with them. And so it was just a way um to acknowledge them and ah acknowledge the work that they were doing.
00:12:53
Speaker
You know, one member of the club that he was especially close to and it makes great sense is G.K. Chesterton. ah They were both ah theologians. ah They both wrote a lot of religious you know work, essays, articles. And then, of course, they were both mystery authors. And I just find that that friendship so fascinating. and And I would love to have been a fly on the wall ah you know in their conversations. It seems that they were good friends. And Chesterton actually spoke at Knox's funeral in 1957. Oh, I didn't know that. But that makes complete sense.
00:13:37
Speaker
So one of the detection club members that he I think butted heads with was Dorothy L. Sayers. I saw a couple of references to just some tension between them. Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the detection club members who participated in that BBC production behind the screen.
00:13:55
Speaker
ah And I think they didn't necessarily agree on the direction that that was supposed to take. And I think there were some other instances where they just ah didn't agree, whether it was on the genre or or um you know other things. um I'm not entirely sure. but ah There were a couple of references to their um so that tension, which had me thinking that you know it was probably pretty significant if it made it made its way into his biographies now. Oh, that's something to think about, right? the We imagine that, oh, they were just all up.
00:14:39
Speaker
band of friends, but anytime you get get a big group together, there's going to be kind of those, um, you know, ruffled feathers one way or another. So it's fun to think about the ones who got along very well. And then there were probably others that didn't.
00:14:57
Speaker
So Sarah, did you do any reading of Ronald Knox's work in preparation for the show? I did. So I read a couple of things. I read a couple of his short stories. So the ah Sherlock pastiche that was written in 1947.
00:15:15
Speaker
I read that. And then I also read The Viaduct Murder, which I had to chuckle because at the end of the book, there's this final chapter and there's a little note to the reader saying, if you feel like the book has been long enough, you don't have to read this chapter.
00:15:31
Speaker
And so I think that's just evidence of kind of how playful he was, right? um I also read one of his short stories. The works that I didn't read, they all featured an investigator, an insurance investigator. And so he did have a sleuth um who featured in most of his writing, but I didn't actually read any of ah those works. I found it actually pretty hard to get my hands on his stuff.
00:15:59
Speaker
I did. I read one of the Miles Breeden ah stories. I was really hooked when I heard that he was an insurance company private detective, because ah those of you who remember that I love Kinsey Milhone, who is Sue Grafton-Sluth, also started her career as an insurance company PI. So I was like, okay, I got to read one of these.
00:16:19
Speaker
um I was able to get some of the e-books on Amazon fairly inexpensive. So if if you're somebody who reads on the Kindle, you can probably get some of his stuff there for just inexpensive. It looks like they're um on the public domain now. But I read the footsteps at the lock. um And again, as you said, he talks to the reader. I don't i didn't ah get to a chapter that said, you know, you can avoid this one. but he does talk to the reader quite often in the story um and sort of comments on the ways of detection fiction, which I thought was very, very cute. I think where the story really shined for me was in the dialogue. Miles Breeden is married to Angela and their
00:17:08
Speaker
Their conversations back and forth is that very witty banter, but they also work out the case together aloud. and so I found that that was like a really great way to follow what is very and a very intricate story, which we see time and time again in Golden Age fiction. ah But it was helpful that it was happening in dialogue and i just it seemed to stick with me better.
00:17:31
Speaker
I will mention that there's a character in this story called Mr. Quirk and he's an American who has come over and he wants to help solve the crime because he is a Detective Society of America member.
00:17:46
Speaker
He's been given the assignment to write his own mystery by the club, so he's very interested in learning more about a true crime. um And there's also a code in this story, so I think we can um learn that Knox really liked to use his code breaking ah skills in his stories.
00:18:06
Speaker
Well, that sounds like a really great read, Brooke, so I'll see if I can track that down. I will say, in The Viaduct Murder, um there, I hope I'm not giving anything away, but there was a secret passage, which I thought ah was pretty funny given the set of rules that he created. But only one, I hope. i Yes, I think there was only one. so So I did find that book a little bit hard to follow. um You know, it's it's close to 100 years old, and the the writing and the dialogue is older, but i I did enjoy it. Yeah, that's great. Well, Brooke, it was a lot of fun talking about and learning about Ronald Knox this week. I hope listeners enjoyed the conversation. You mentioned some of his work being in the public domain. I think listeners can find his work on Project Gutenberg if they're looking for ah ebook versions.
00:19:01
Speaker
um We will include links to the books that we talked about and the ones that are on the public domain as well so listeners can go in and read some Ronald Knox on their own.
00:19:14
Speaker
Yes, it's been so good learning more about another Golden Age author, and I hope you enjoyed it today too, listeners. Thanks for joining us on Clued in Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah, and we both love mystery. Clued in Mystery is written and produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers.
00:19:35
Speaker
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