George Watson (scholar)

George Grimes Watson
Born 13 October 1927
Brisbane, Australia
Died 2 August 2013, aged 85
Cambridge, UK
Occupation writer, scholar
Alma mater University of Queensland
Trinity College, Oxford

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]

Early life

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 to 1957.[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]

Watson contributed to Encounter, a cold-war intellectual journal, and published material arguing that Hitler was a Marxist and that socialism promoted genocide.[10] He was featured in the conservative documentary The Soviet Story in 2008, where he argued that Karl Marx was responsible for coming up with the idea of genocide.[11] For this he was criticised by Ivars Ījabs[12] and Robert Grant[13] who argue that Watson's views are based on mistranslation and distortion reflecting his ideological bias. The translation of Völkerabfälle as "racial trash" lay at the centre of this,[11] with defenders of Marx and Engels saying that a proper translation would be "residual fragments of peoples".

In his will he left £950,000 to the Liberal Democrats[14] and a painting, Rocky Landscape with Saint John the Baptist by Joos de Momper the Younger, to the National Gallery, London.[15]

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?" The Wilson Quarterly (Winter 1993)[16]
  • "Hitler and the Socialist Dream", The Independent (November 1998)[10]
  • "Remembering Prufrock: Hugh Sykes Davies 1909–1984", Jacket (Fall 2001)[17]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Lewis, Clive Staples. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950–1963. HarperCollins. p. 1100.
  2. ↑ http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/george-watson-1927-2013
  3. ↑ http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/university-cambridge-fellow-prof-george-watson/story-24576443-detail/story.html
  4. ↑ Watt, Holly (13 November 2014). "Liberal Democrats receive £950,000 bequest from Cambridge don". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 6 September 2016.
  5. ↑ "How a gift for puncturing fads left one academic lonely but right" by Ed Smith; New Statesman 6 February 2014
  6. ↑ "College profile for George Watson". St John's College of Cambridge University. Archived from the original on 6 July 2013. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
  7. ↑ The Cosmic Comic (Douglas Adams, 1952-2001) by George Watson; Michigan Quarterly Review vol. XLIII, no. 1, Winter 2004
  8. ↑ The Times House of Commons, 1959
  9. ↑ "Senior Treasurers". Keynes Society. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
  10. 1 2 Watson, George (22 November 1998). "Hitler and the Socialist Dream". The Independent. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
  11. 1 2 minute 16:37 Film "The Soviet Story"
  12. ↑ Ījabs, Ivars (2008-05-23). "Cienīga atbilde: Soviet Story". Latvijas Vēstnesis (in Latvian). Retrieved 2008-06-15.
  13. ↑ Grant, Robert (Nov 1999). "Review: The Lost Literature of Socialism". The Review of English Studies. New Series. 50 (200): 557–559. doi:10.1093/res/50.200.557.
  14. ↑ "Cambridge don leaves Liberal Democrats £950,000" BBC News 13 November 2014
  15. ↑ "Joos de Momper the Younger | Rocky Landscape with Saint John the Baptist | NG6657 | National Gallery, London". www.nationalgallery.org.uk. Retrieved 2016-09-12.
  16. ↑ Watson, George (Winter 1993). "Millar or Marx?". Wilson Quarterly. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
  17. ↑ Watson, George (Fall 2001). "Remembering Prufrock: Hugh Sykes Davies 1909–1984". Sewanee Review. Retrieved 9 May 2013.

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. *
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