Robert E. Knowles

Robert Edward Knowles (1868–1946) was born at Maxwell in Grey County, Ontario, the son of an Irish Presbyterian minister, and was ordained in 1891. He served a long pastorate at Knox Presbyterian Church in Galt and turned to fiction at thirty-seven with St. Cuthbert's, following it with six more books of fiction by 1911, among them The Undertow, The Web of Time and The Attic Guest, most drawn from the Scottish Canadian communities he knew. The shock of a 1911 train wreck left him needing repeated rest cures, and in 1915, no longer able to carry out his duties, he resigned the ministry. He then wrote for the Toronto Daily Star, where his interviews with visiting celebrities became better known than his novels.