Watts, Alaric Alexander

(1797-1864)

   Born in London, he was a tutor to several families until 1818, when he returned to London to become sub-editor of New Monthly Magazine. His Borrowings of Byron in the Literary Gazette in 1821 led to his being appointed as editor of Leeds Intelligencer in 1822. For the next fifteen years he was editor of the Literary Souvenir, which focused on annuals and pocket-books, of which paper he became the proprietor in 1826. He helped found the Standard newspaper (1827), and in 1833 he founded the United Service Gazette, from which he retired in 1847. He was made bankrupt in 1850 and was granted a civil pension in 1854. He died at Notting Hill and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. Some of his publications: Poetical Album, 1828 (a collection of fugitive poems). Poetical Sketches, 1828 and 1829. Lyrics of the Heart, 1851. The Laurel and the Lyre, 1867. Some of his poems: "An Austrian Army," "Come, Let Us Banish Sorrow," "Forget Thee? No, Never!" "The Aeolian Harp," "The First-Born," "The Home of Taliessin," "'Tis Eve on the Ocean."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Poetical Sketches: The Profession: The Broken Heart, Etc. Hurst, Robinson and Co., 1824. Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Comic Verse. Michael Roberts and Janet Adam Smith, eds. Faber and Faber, 1978.