Edmund George Valpy Knox (10 May 1881 – 2 January 1971), was a poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and satirist

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 who wrote under the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Evoe. He was editor of Punch

Punch (magazine)

Punch, or the London Charivari was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire established in 1841 by Henry Mayhew and engraver Ebenezer Landells. Historically, it was most influential in the 1840s and 50s, when it helped to coin the term "cartoon" in its modern sense as a humorous illustration...

1932-1949, having been a regular contributor in verse and prose for many years.

He was son of Edmund Arbuthnott Knox

Edmund Arbuthnott Knox

Edmund Arbuthnott Knox was the fourth Bishop of Manchester, from 1903 to 1921. He was described as a prominent evangelical....

. He was brother of Catholic priest and author Ronald Knox

Ronald Knox

Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was an English priest, theologian and writer.-Life:Ronald Knox was born in Kibworth, Leicestershire, England into an Anglican family and was educated at Eton College, where he took the first scholarship in 1900 and Balliol College, Oxford, where again...

, codebreaker Dilly Knox

Dilly Knox

Alfred Dillwyn 'Dilly' Knox CMG was a classics scholar at King's College, Cambridge, and a British codebreaker...

, and Anglican monk and New Testament scholar Wilfred Knox. His daughter, the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald was a Booker Prize-winning English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. In 2008, The Times included her in a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...

, wrote a biography of the four brothers titled The Knox Brothers.

He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham

King Edward's School, Birmingham

King Edward's School is an independent secondary school in Birmingham, England, founded by King Edward VI in 1552. It is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, and is widely regarded as one of the most academically successful schools in the country, according to...

 and Rugby

Rugby School

Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...

.

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

Mary Shepard

Mary Shepard was an English illustrator, best known for her illustrations of P. L. Travers' Mary Poppins....

, illustrator of Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins is a series of children's books written by P. L. Travers and originally illustrated by Mary Shepard. The books centre on a magical English nanny, Mary Poppins. She is blown by the East wind to Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, London and into the Banks' household to care for their...

 and daughter of E.H. Shepard who illustrated of Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...

.

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

John Masefield

John Edward Masefield, OM, was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967...

, Walter de la Mare

Walter de la Mare

Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....

, Edmund Blunden

Edmund Blunden

Edmund Charles Blunden, MC was an English poet, author and critic. Like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote of his experiences in World War I in both verse and prose. For most of his career, Blunden was also a reviewer for English publications and an academic in Tokyo and later Hong Kong...

, Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...

 and J. C. Squire

J. C. Squire

Sir John Collings Squire was a British poet, writer, historian, and influential literary editor of the post-World War I period.- Biography :...

 - 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. Although for the greater part of his life an agnostic, he gradually drifted back into the Church of England.

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)

External links

• Edmund George Valpy Knox at University of Toronto Libraries
  University of Toronto Libraries
  The University of Toronto Libraries is the library system of the University of Toronto, comprising about 30 individual libraries that hold more than 10 million bound volumes and 5 million microform volumes...