On English translation

published writings include works of satire, theological reflection, translation, literary criticism, and detective fiction. Educated at Eton and at Baillol College, Oxford, where he was awarded the B.A. in classics and philosophy in 1910, Knox was ordained as an Anglican priest soon after, and named chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford in 1912. Five years later he converted to Catholicism, and became a Roman Catholic priest in 1918. After teaching for some years at St. Edmund's College in Hertfordshire, Knox served as the Catholic chaplain to Oxford undergraduates from 1926 to 1939; he subsequently moved to Shropshire to undertake a new translation of St. Jerome's fourth-century Vulgate (Latin) Bible. His rendering of the New Testament was published in 1944, the Old Testament in 1949 and 1950; incorporating numerous revisions, the text appeared in its entirety in 1955. Knox is also known for his definitive study entitled Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion (1950), a variety of literary and philosophical essays, and a number of detective novels, the most popular of which is Still Dead, published in 1934. A close friend of Evelyn Waugh, who was appointed his literary executor, Knox was the uncle of the novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. Waugh's biography of Knox was published in 1959, and Fitzgerald's account of his life appears in her group biography, The Knox Brothers, which came out in 1977. Knox first focused his attention on the problems of the translator in On Englishing the Bible (1949); he reflected again on these problems, considering them in a broader context, in the essay "On English Translation" that follows. This essay was presented as the Romanes lecture at Oxford and published by the Clarendon Press in 1957; the following year, after Knox's death, it was included in the collection of his work entitled Literary Distractions (Sheed & Ward). It appears here with the permission of Oxford University Press.