Ronald Knox

"Ronald Knox" is a title based upon conjecture.

Check the behind the scenes section, the revision history and discussion page for additional comments on this article's title.

Knox was a thinker who conjectured that any person would cease to exist if they were ever no longer observed by God. Sabbath recalled this thought, which he described as "Knox's maxim", when he voyaged into the deeper realms of time in the Jonah. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

Behind the scenes

• Robert Knox was the first writer to apply the idea of "canon" to works of fiction, in his essay Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes Andrew Hickey's The Book of the Enemy later introduced one of Knox's ideas from that essay, connecting Sherlock Holmes to the siege of Sidney Street, into the DWU.
• "Knox's maxim" is a reference to the 20th century English Catholic priest Ronald Knox, who composed two limericks relevant to Sabbath's observation:

"There was a young man who said "God

Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply: 

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

"Ronald Knox