PUBLISHER: Knight & Brown, New York, ? - ?
ABOUT: Knight & Brown submitted no catalogs to PTLA; it is not mentioned in DLB 49. It has, however, been possible to trace the company through several brief articles in the New York Times. From these we learn that Henry W. Knight, born in Maine in 1857, registered with the Seventh Maine Regisment for service in the Civil War. A distinguished verteran, throughout he was prominent in Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) organizations and events. He was for twennty-three years superintendent of the Methodist Book Concern. In 1882 became a partner in the publishing firm of Bryan Taylor & Co. (with fellow directors George J. Bryan and C. W. Brown) (NYT 20 December 1902). In 1895 this company was succeeded by the Knight & Brown Company, which in turn dissolved in May 1902 with Knight assuming full control; by that time he was also a major stockholder in the Jones Brothers Publishing Company of Cincinnati, Ohio. He suffered a business reversal in 1903, though with reorganization, his firm seems to have survived until his death on July 2, 1917 (NYT 4 July 1917 obituary). He was survived by his wife, Tressa O. Knight (who died April 14, 1932), a son, and a daughter.
It has proven surprisingly difficult to trace publications by any of the firms Knight was associated with but there are indications they published some titles. Still, it seems more likely much of their business consisted of distribution of remaindered or reprinted titles. The Jerome K. Jerome Society bibliographic website (www.jeromekjerome.com/bibliography/) notes that in 1898 they published an edition of Three Men In a Boat with "text priinted from the same plates as the Rand-McNally edition." As it happens their editon of Lucile is also printed on the same plates as the Rand-McNally editions (with 377 text pages) as are one or more of the R. Worthington editions. These may all be the same plates, but duplicate copies of sets of plates were commonly available. Knight & Brown may therefore have purchased completed sheets from Rand-McNally but may equally have owned plates descended from Worthington (who left publishing in 1893 but might well have sold off selected plates even earlier).
LUCILE’s ISSUED BY Knight & Brown: It produced at least one Lucile, namely:
Last revised: 21 July 2020