Edward Knoblock
Edward Knoblock (born Edward Gustavus Knoblauch; 7 April 1874 – 19 July 1945) was a playwright and novelist, originally American and later a naturalised British citizen. He wrote numerous plays, often at the rate of two or three a year, of which the most successful were Kismet (1911) and Milestones (1912, co-written with Arnold Bennett). Many of his plays were collaborations, with, among others, Vicki Baum, Beverley Nichols, J. B. Priestley and Vita Sackville-West.
Edward Knoblock
April 7, 1874
July 19, 1945 (aged 71)
Playwright and novelist
After serving in the British armed forces during the First World War, he combined his theatrical career with work on films, both in Hollywood and the UK. He lived most of his adult life in London, where he died in 1945 at the age of 71.
Life and career[edit]
Early years[edit]
Knoblock was born in New York City, the second of the seven children of Carl (Charles) Eduard Knoblauch and his wife, Gertrud, née Wiebe. Knoblock's father was a successful stockbroker with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1880 Knoblock's mother died suddenly. His father remarried in 1885 but died of acute appendicitis in 1886. Knoblock's American-born stepmother, who had attended music conservatory in Leipzig, took the children to Germany, where his older brother was already in school and where the cost of living was lower. Knoblock spent two years at school in Berlin. A legacy from Charles Knoblauch's maternal uncle in 1890 enabled the family to return to New York, and in 1892 Knoblock went to Harvard, graduating in 1896. See Knoblauch, "Nachrichten aus Manhattan," p. 370–381.[1] Thereafter he spent much of his life in Europe, first in Paris and from 1897 in London.[1]
Determined to pursue a theatrical career, Knoblock, in the words of The Times, "settled down to 14 years of hard and unremunerative work, gaining experience of the theatre by acting as well as by writing, adapting and translating plays".[1] He toured with William Greet's company in The Dovecot, an adaptation of a French comedy (1898);[2] he managed the Avenue Theatre (also 1898);[3] he appeared at the Royalty Theatre in November 1899 as Jo in the premiere of Shaw's You Never Can Tell,[2] and was in the cast at the Adelphi Theatre in Laurence Irving's Bonnie Dundee (1900).[2] His first dramatic work to be staged was a collaboration with Lawrence Sterner, a revised version of the latter's 1895 play The Club Baby, produced at the Avenue in May 1898,[4] running for 39 performances.[5]
Early 20th century[edit]
Between the turn of the century and his breakthrough success in 1911 Knoblock wrote The Partikler Pet (an adaptation of a play by Max Maurey), 1905; The Shulamite, adapted from Alice and Claude Askew's novel, 1906; The Cottage in the Air, adapted from Princess Priscilla's Fortnight, 1909; Sister Beatrice, (a translation of Maurice Maeterlinck's play), 1910; and The Faun 1911.[2] During part of this period he held the post of reader of plays at the Kingsway Theatre, London, where Lena Ashwell and Norman McKinnel were in management together. Knoblock claimed that in eighteen months he read five thousand plays, "and neither lost nor held up a single one of them".[1] In 1909 he returned to Paris, from where he made long visits to Tunis and Kairouan, absorbing the local colour and atmosphere that inspired him to write the play Kismet.[1] It was taken up by Oscar Asche and presented at the Garrick Theatre in 1911, running for 328 performances in its first production,[6] and a further 222 in its first revival, in 1914.[7]