Short answers, pulled from the story.
G. Wilson Knight, born George Richard Wilson Knight in 1897, was an English literary critic, academic, actor, and theatrical director. He is known especially for The Wheel of Fire, a collection of essays on Shakespearian tragedy published in 1930, and for his interpretation of mythic and symbolic content in literature.
The Wheel of Fire is a collection of essays published in 1930 interpreting Shakespearian tragedy. It became Knight's most celebrated critical work and established his approach of reading Shakespeare's plays for mythic and spiritual patterns.
Knight's first academic post was at Trinity College, Toronto in 1931. He later taught at Stowe School from 1941 to 1946, then joined the University of Leeds as a Reader in English Literature in 1946, becoming a Professor of English Literature there in 1956 and retiring in 1962.
Knight produced and acted in the major Shakespearian tragedies at Hart House Theatre in Toronto. His directing credits include Hamlet at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre in London in 1935, This Sceptred Isle at the Westminster Theatre in 1941, and productions of Aeschylus and Racine at Leeds in 1946 and 1947.
Knight was a believer in spiritualism and served as a vice-president of the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain. This belief informed his critical approach, which consistently looked for genuine prophetic and mystical dimensions in literary texts.
Knight died in 1985. His final Shakespeare collection, Shakespearian Dimensions, was published in 1984, just a year before his death. His writing career spanned more than five decades, from Myth and Miracle in 1929 through posthumously issued essay collections.