Ellis Cornelia Knight (27 March 1757 - 18 December 1837) was an English gentlewoman, traveller, landscape artist, and writer of novels, verse, journals, and history. She had the acquaintance of many prominent figures in her lifetime, from members of the circle of Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds in her girlhood; Cardinal de Bernis, Sir William and Lady Emma Hamilton, and Lord Horatio Nelson during her Italian sojourn; and members of the British Royal Family during her service to Queen Charlotte and Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales. She corresponded with or met other writers of her time including Frances Burney, Germaine de Staël, Lady Charlotte Bury, and Jane Porter. Biography Knight's father, Sir Joseph Knight, had a long career in the British Navy and was knighted by King George III, attaining the rank of Rear Admiral of the White. Her mother Philippina, his second wife, ensured her only child received a thorough education from Swiss instructors in dance, drawing, history, mathematics, Latin, French, and other European languages. Upon her father's death in 1775, Knight and her mother were left with only a small income and no pension, inducing them to leave for the Continent in 1776, where they settled in Italy. In 1790, Cornelia anonymously published Dinarbas, a continuation of Johnson's Rasselas in which Rasselas becomes ruler of Abyssinia, marries, and finds happiness. Following its success, she published Marcus Flaminius in 1792, a historical epistolary novel. The Knights were living in Naples in 1798 when word came of Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile. They participated in the ecstatic celebrations of that victory when Nelson arrived in Naples, and became good friends of the Hamiltons and Lord Nelson. After her mother died in 1799, Knight was invited to accompany the Hamiltons and Lord Nelson on their return journey to England. During this trip she became increasingly uneasy about the warmth of the relationship between Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, though she also witnessed her ode to Nelson on the Battle of the Nile sung by Emma with a musical setting by Joseph Haydn. Once back in England, Knight settled independently, writing and making frequent visit to friends. She was appointed companion to Queen Charlotte (1805) and to a similar position, later, in the household of Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales (1813). In 1805 her reputation as a learned author of highly respectable character earned her an invitation to