The Knox Institute found its earliest and not least curious shape in 1988, established by Harbor Willet & Lucian Freud as a reliquary for the various anonymized letters delivered by friends and contemporaries to their shared studio in Paddington, West London.

By means of an irresolvable postal quirk, the address was often the final destination for otherwise undeliverable letters within the W8 postal district. Misdirected envelopes containing the mundane personal and the shocking confessional arrived almost daily. Friends and contemporaries of the two painters took up the mischievous practice of mailing “undelivered” letters of their own. Eventually it became impossible to tell these contributions from the genuinely misdirected correspondence, and a selection of them were published in a small pamphlet called The Knox Letters—excerpts of found material printed alongside the work of those who knew the address to which “submissions” could be sent.

Since 1988, The Knox Institute has been funded by the Willet Foundation as a conservatory for short works of poetry and fiction by established and promising writers. Contemporarily, the institute publishes writing and visual art solicited by invitation in a biannual reader, The Knox Almanac.

Currently the Almanac is edited by K. Pesado and Council Bailey who can be reached using editorial [at] knox [dot] institute.