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Author: Watts, Alaric A.

Biography:

WATTS, Alaric Alexander (1797-1864: ODNB)

Born at London, he was the youngest son of Sarah (Bolton) and John Mosley Watts. His parents separated early in his life and he lived with his mother. Although she ensured that he had a good education—he attended Wye College Grammar School in Kent and an academy, also in Kent, where he learned French from an émigré teacher—his early life was unsettled. He became a keen reader first of novels and then of poetry which he read in John Bell’s 1782 collection, The Poets of Great Britain. He worked as a teacher and tutor but was increasingly determined to follow a literary path. In 1821 he married Priscilla (Zillah) Maden Wiffen, a Quaker from Woburn, Bedfordshire, and a sister of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (q.v.); they had two sons and one daughter (one son died in infancy; the other, Alaric Alfred, wrote his father’s biography). Watts’s career as a journalist began with submitting poems to periodicals and progressed to editing the New Monthly Magazine (1819), the Leeds Intelligencer (1822-5), the Manchester Courier (1825-6), and the United Services Gazette (1833-41). However, he is chiefly known as editor of two annuals: Literary Souvenir (1824-35) and its successor, Cabinet of Modern Art (1836-7). Contributors included the major poets of the day. A dispute with William Maginn of Fraser’s Magazine led in 1835 to Watts bringing a charge of libel—which he won. In the 1840s he suffered financial setbacks, including bankruptcy, and he was involved in other lawsuits; these difficulties eventually spelled the end of his literary career, despite the success of his Lyrics of the Heart (1851). In 1853 he accepted a position with the Inland Revenue office at Somerset House. In 1854 he was granted an annual civil list pension of £100 and in 1857 he edited Men of the Times; or, Biographical Sketches (which included his autobiography). He died at home in Notting Hill following a stroke and was buried in Highgate cemetery. (Alaric Alfred Watts, Alaric Watts: a Narrative of his Life [1884]; ODNB 28 Dec. 2020)

 

Other Names:

  • Alaric Watts
 

Books written (5):

London: printed by [S. and R. Bentley], 1822
London/ Edinburgh: Hurst, Robinson, and Co./ Archibald Constable and Co., 1823
3rd edn. London/ Edinburgh: Hurst, Robinson, and Co./ Archibald Constable and Co., 1824
4th edn. London: Hurst, Chance, and Co., 1828