... first appeared in a short story of 1859 by Elizabeth Gaskell – in which she already displayed all of the heroism that would come to be associated with her. Eric Knight's Lassie Come–Home was a short story in the Saturday Evening Post in 1938, and a full–length novel in 1940. It was filmed in 1943 – and the rest is history. As far as I can ascertain, Knight never wrote of Lassie again. Although born in England (in 1897), he became a Major in the US Army and took US citizenship in 1942. He died in an air crash in Dutch Guiana (now Surinam) in 1943.
© Haydn Thompson 2017