• Name: Knowles, John
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 24  March  1781
• Death Date: 21  July  1841
• Occupation: naval surveyor
• Occupation: biographer

There seem to be two main Knowles in the diary: John Knowles (1781-1841), naval surveyor and biographer and James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), playwright.

John Knowles is best-known .'... for his long friendship with Henry Fuseli and his biography of the painter. Knowles was introduced to Fuseli by their mutual friend John Bonnycastle in June 1805. Since the Navy Office was only a few steps from the Royal Academy across Somerset Place, Knowles and Fuseli saw each other almost daily for the next twenty years.' (DNB)

Knowles first appears in the diary in the context of the Joseph Johnson circle (in 1807) and remains closely connected to members of that circle, esp. Bonnycastle and Fuseli. These seem much more likely to ref to John Knowles, given the Fuseli connection Also, the DNB suggests that James Sheridan Knowles was not well-known and settled in London until the 1820s - before that he was studying medicine in Aberdeen, involved in Irish and provincial theatre etc. From 1828 G occasionally distinguishes S/Shn/Sheridan Knowles, but the great majority of entries to Knowles come before 1820 and do not have an initial. This suggests that it is the Sheridan Knowles entries that are being distinguished so as not to be confused with the more longstanding John Knowles entries. This gives over two hundred entries for John Knowles and only seven for Sheridan:
9.1.1828 'Dine at Kenney's, w. Sheridan Knowles....'
On the 25th of the same month, 'meet S Knowles'
23.12.1831 'Meet 'Sh.n Knowles'
30.3.1832 'S Knowles calls'
8.4.1832 'Call on S Knowles n (adv. pere and 2)
26.4.1832 'meet Sheridan Knowles'
6.11.1835 'Meet Sheridan Knowles'

The only mention of any Knowles in the biographies is St Clair in talking about how G tried to persuade John Knowles not to print Wollstonecraft's love letters in his Life of Fuseli. Tyson's only reference to Knowles in his life of Joseph Johnson is to his attendance at Johnson's funeral - for which the source is G's diary.

11.11.1815 'dine at Knowles’s, w. Fuseli, Otley, Palmer, and Edward Knowles' - Edward Knowles unidentified, is uncoded.

15.10.1827 'Knowles senr' appears as a theatre adv, appears in the same context 1.5.1832 and 10.4.1833: this cannot be John Knowles's father (also John, shipwright, d. 1814) but has been coded as James Sheridan Knowles's father James Knowles (1759-1840), schoolmaster and lexicographer.

There are three entries for Mrs Knowles, 1794, 1800 and 1804, all without her husband and it is not clear who they refer to - John Knowles never marries, James Sheridan doesn't marry until 1809 and all three entries come before John or James Sheridan enter the diary. These entries have been left uncoded.

• Gerald P. Tyson, Joseph Johnson: A Liberal Publisher (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1979).
• St Clair

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.