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| 1832 births | |
| 1914 deaths | |
| english poets | |
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Walter Theodore Watts was born at St. Ives in what was then Huntingdonshire . He added his mother's name of Dunton to his surname in 1897. He was originally educated as a naturalist, and saw much of the East Anglian Gypsies , of whose superstitions and folk-lore he made careful study. Abandoning natural history for the law, he qualified as a solicitor and went to London, where he practised for some years, giving his spare time to his chosen pursuit of literature. One of his clients was Swinburne , whom he befriended in 1872 . He contributed regularly to the '' Examiner '' from 1874 and to the '' Athenaeum '' from 1875 until 1898 , being for more than twenty years the principal critic of poetry in the latter journal. He wrote widely for other publications and contributed several articles to ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', of which the most significant was that on ''Poetry'' in the ninth edition of the '' Encyclopædia Britannica ''. In that article he explored the first principles of poetry. Watts-Dunton had considerable influence as the friend of many of the leading Men Of Letters of his time; he enjoyed the confidence of Tennyson , and contributed an appreciation of him to the authorized biography. He was in later years Rossetti 's most intimate friend; Rossetti made a portrait of Watts in pastel in 1874. In 1879 Swinburne's alcoholic dysentry so alarmed him that he moved the poet into his semi-detached home at 'The Pines', 11 Putney Hill, Putney , which they shared for nearly thirty years until Swinburne's death in 1909 . Watts' household included his sister Miranda Mason, her husband Charles (who was also a solicitor), her son, Bertie (born 1874), and later a second sister. They also employed a live-in cook and a housemaid. Watts-Dunton married Clara Reich in 1905 and she settled into the family with ease. Although Watts is widely praised for extending Swinburne's life and encouraging his enthusiasm for the landscape verse that was amongst the best of his later works, Watts is also castigated for sabotaging the completion of Swinburne's erotic sadomasochistic novel ''Lesbia Brandon''. It was not until , whom Watts-Dunton had known well in his own youth. Imaginative glamour and mysticism are their prominent characteristics, and the novel in particular was credited with bringing pure romance back into public favour. He edited Borrow's '' Lavengro '' (1893) and '' Romany Rye '' (1903); in 1903 he published ''The Renascence of Wonder'', a treatise on the Romantic Movement ; and his ''Studies of Shakespeare'' appeared in 1910. But it was not only in his published work that Watts-Dunton's influence on the literary life of his time was potent. His long and intimate association with Rossetti and Swinburne made him a unique figure in the world of letters. His grasp of metrical principle and of the historic perspective of English poetry brought him respect as a literary critic. NOTES Vol. XIX (1885) Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) EXTERNAL LINKS BIBLIOGRAPHY
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