George G. Watson

George Grimes Watson (13 October 1927^[1] - 2 August 2013^[2]) was a scholar, literary critic, historian, a fellow of St John's College and professor of English at Cambridge University.^[3][4][5][6]

Background

Watson was born in Brisbane, Australia, on 13 October 1927.^[1] He was educated at Brisbane Boys' College and the University of Queensland, where he graduated in English in 1948. He secured a scholarship for a second degree and graduated in English from Trinity College at Oxford University in 1950.^[1]

Career

A talented linguist, he worked for the European Commission, both as an interpreter and checking its publications.

Watson became a lecturer of English at Cambridge University in 1959 and a Fellow of St John's College in 1961.^[1]

He met C. S. Lewis at Oxford's Socratic Club in 1948 and attended his lectures. Later, he counted him among his finest professors and, after Watson joined Cambridge, among his colleagues.^[1] Among Watson's English students at St John's was Douglas Adams.^[7]

Politics

He was an active member of the Liberal Party. He was a member of Liberal Party co-ownership committee from 1951-57.^[8] He stood in Cheltenham in the 1959 general election. In the 1979 European election, he fought the Leicester European Parliament constituency. He was senior treasurer of the Cambridge University Liberal Club from 1978 to 1992.^[9]

In his will he left £950,000 to the Liberal Democrats^[10] and a painting, Rocky Landscape with Saint John the Baptist by Joos de Momper the Younger, to the National Gallery, London.^[11]

Works

Books

Watson's works, many of them reprinted, in the Library of Congress include:

• Unservile state; essays in liberty and welfare (1957)
• Concise Cambridge bibliography of English literature (1958)
• British Constitution and Europe (1959)
• Literary critics, a study of English descriptive criticism (1962)
• Literary critics; a study of English descriptive criticism (1964)
• Concise Cambridge bibliography of English literature, 600-1950 (1965)
• Coleridge the poet (1966)
• Is socialism left? (1967, 1972)
• Study of literature (1968)
• New Cambridge bibliography of English literature, edited by George Watson (1969)
• Literary English since Shakespeare, edited by George Watson (1970)
• English ideology; studies in the language of Victorian politics (1973)
• Literary critics; a study of English descriptive criticism (1973, 1986)
• Politics and literature in modern Britain (1977)
• Discipline of English : a guide to critical theory and practice (1978, 1979)
• Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth, edited with an introduction by George Watson (1980, 1995, 2008)
• Shorter new Cambridge bibliography of English literature (1981)
• Idea of liberalism: studies for a new map of politics (1985)
• Writing a thesis: a guide to long essays and dissertations (1987)
• Certainty of literature : essays in polemic (1989)
• Biographia literaria, or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited, with an introduction by George Watson (1991)
• Critical essays on C.S. Lewis, edited by George Watson (1992)
• Lord Acton's History of liberty : a study of his library, with an edited text of his History of liberty notes (1994)
• Lost literature of socialism (1998, 2002, 2010)
• Never ones for theory? : England and the war of ideas (2002)
• Take back the past : myths of the twentieth century (2007)

Articles

• “Were the Intellectuals Duped?” Encounter (December 1973)
• "Millar or Marx?" Wilson Quarterly (Winter 1993)^[12]
• "Hitler and the Socialist Dream," Independent (November 1998)^[13]
• "Remembering Prufrock: Hugh Sykes Davies 1909–1984," Jacket Magazine (Fall 2001)^[14]

See also

• C. S. Lewis

References

External sources

• Reisz, Matthew. "Obituary". Times Higher Education. 
• Lewis, Clive Staples. The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. HarperCollins. p. 1100. *