thumb|17 Marine Drive, [[Rottingdean, East Sussex, Watson's home for some years.]]

Sir William Watson (2 August 185811 August 1935) was an English poet, popular in his time for the celebratory content, and famous for the controversial political content, of his verse. Initially popularly recognised, he was then neglected because of changing tastes.

Poet

Watson was born in Burley, in present-day West Yorkshire, and was brought up in Liverpool, where his father had moved for business. In 1880 he published his first book, The Prince's Quest, a poem showing the influence of Keats and Tennyson. It was republished in 1893. In 1884 appeared Epigrams of Art, Life and Nature, which already showed the mature Watson's characteristic restraint and concision.

He became a prolific poet of the 1890s, and a contributor to The Yellow Book, though without "decadent" associations, and on the traditionalist wing of English poetry. His reputation was established in 1891, with the publication of "Wordsworth's Grave", and the appearance in The Fortnightly Review, August 1891, of an article by Grant Allen entitled "A New Poet." On the occasion of Alfred Tennyson's death in 1892, he was a strong candidate to be his eulogist, the commission resulting in his "Lachrymae Musarum" (in a book by that name that also contained other poems). Still, Prime Minister Gladstone bestowed on him the Civil List pension of £200 available on the death of Tennyson.

Works

thumb|Young William Watson

thumb|Grave of William Watson at All Saints Childwall

  • The Prince's Quest and Other Poems (1880)
  • Epigrams of Art, Life and Nature (1884)
  • Wordsworth's Grave and Other Poems (1890)
  • Poems (1892)
  • Lachrymae Musarum (1892)
  • Lyric Love: An Anthology (1892)
  • Eloping Angels : A Caprice (1893)
  • The Poems of William Watson (1893)
  • Excursions in Criticism: Being Some Prose Recreations Of A Rhymer (1893)
  • Odes and Other Poems (1894)
  • The Father of the Forest & Other Poems (1895)
  • The Purple East: A Series Of Sonnets On England's Desertion of Armenia (1896)
  • The Year of Shame (1897)
  • The Hope of the World and Other Poems (1898)
  • The Collected Poems of William Watson (1898)
  • Ode on the Coronation of King Edward VII (1908)
  • Selected Poems (1903)
  • For England. Poems Written During Estrangement (1904)
  • New Poems (1909)
  • Sable and Purple (1910)
  • The Heralds of the Dawn: A Play in Eight Scenes (1912)
  • The Muse in Exile (1913)
  • Pencraft. A Plea For The Older Ways (1916)
  • The Man Who Saw: and Other Poems Arising out of the War (1917)
  • Retrogression and Other Poems (1917)
  • The Superhuman Antagonists and Other Poems (1919)
  • Ireland Unfreed. Poems and Verses written in the early months of 1921 (1921)

References

  • Jean Moorcroft Wilson (1981) I Was an English Poet: a Critical Biography of Sir William Watson 1858–1936
  • Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors. H. W. Wilson, 1942.

Notes

  • Archival Material at
  • William Watson Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.