Identity area
Reference code
Watson/7/1
Unique identifier
Title
Date(s)
- 1959 - 2013 (Creation)
Level of description
Subseries
Extent and medium
1 file; paper; photographs.
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
George Grimes Watson was born in Brisbane, Australia, on 13 October 1927. He was educated at Brisbane Boys' College and the University of Queensland, where he graduated in 1948 with a degree in English. He secured a scholarship for a second degree and received an English degree from Trinity College, Oxford in 1950; he worked for the European Commission as an interpreter before becoming a lecturer in English at Cambridge in 1959 and a Fellow of St John's College in 1961. He remained at St John's until his death on 2 August 2013.
Watson edited 'The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature'. As well as producing wide-ranging literary and cultural criticism, he was involved in leftist politics, campaigning as a Liberal candidate in 1959 and 1979 and working as Editor for the Unservile State Group; his political writing often critiques socialism from a liberal perspective.
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Content and structure area
Scope and content
This subseries collects documents pertaining to George Watson's role as a Fellow of St John's and a lecturer and examiner in the Cambridge English Faculty. Items will ultimately be catalogued individually; for now, a list follows.
§
CAMBRIDGE KEEPSAKES
Heffers bookmark
Rickards ‘Welcome to Great Britain’ brochure, with an image of the Bridge of Sighs, 1970
§
TEACHING
MHRA Style Book flyers
University Microfilms International booklet about dissertation research
§
FACULTY OF ENGLISH
John Holloway, ‘Chairman’s Report’, November 1971, plus response from Leo Salingar
Hugh Sykes Davies, ‘Working Party on University and College Teaching in English’, 23 February 1983
§
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE
Letter from Francis Puryer White to Reinhold Regensburger, 20 July 1942
Note apologising for Hugh Sykes Davies’s unavailability to students, 14 January (1964/1969/1975)
Council minutes, 11 January 1979
‘List of Noted Johnians’, June 1982
Malcolm Underwood, ‘Some Historical Notes for the Three Thousandth Meeting of the College Council’, 11 November 1991
College Calendar, 2012-2013
§
COLLEAGUES
John Renford Bambrough’s curriculum vitae
Photograph of Herbert Butterfield
Hugh Sykes Davies, ‘The Scales of Disaster: Elegy for an endangered species’
Robert Aubrey Hinde’s curriculum vitae
Research material on Philip Kermode, whom Watson suspected to be a relative of Frank Kermode
Richard Luckett's curriculum vitae
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Hugh Trevor-Roper
§
REPORTS
BAGCHI, J, ‘Walter Pater’s Criticism and Its Contemporary Relations’ (doctoral dissertation)
DALE, Peter A, ‘Poetics & Historical Thought in England 1830-80: Carlyle, Arnold & Pater’ (doctoral dissertation), 21 October 1974
GUTTERIDGE, J D, application for Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, 10 May 1975
HERTZ, A L, ‘“Macmillan’s Magazine” under David Masson 1859-67’ (doctoral dissertation), circa April 1982
HOLLOWAY, John, application for Litt.D. degree, 1969
KEARNEY, C J, ‘The Writings of B.R. Haydon’ (doctoral dissertation)
LARSEN, Kenneth J, 'The Religious Sources of Crashaw's Poetry' (doctoral dissertation; reports by Muriel Bradbrook and Elsie Duncan-Jones)
O’SULLIVAN, K P D M, ‘The Rise of the Irish Novel’ (doctoral dissertation), 15 March 1969
PAGE, A, ‘Coleridge’s Philosophy of Language’ (doctoral dissertation), August 1981
PHILLIPS, C L, ‘A Critical Study of Robert Bridges’ “Testament of Beauty” and Its Relation to His Intellectual Development’ (doctoral dissertation), February 1983
SKILTON, D J, ‘Anthony Trollope and His Contemporary Critics’ (doctoral dissertation), 25 August 1969 and 6 March 1971 (resubmission)
SPENCE, G W, ‘John Stuart Mill on Sociology and the Art of Life’ (doctoral dissertation), 1968
THOMAS, William David Aitken, ‘A Variorum Edition of the Poetry of Robert Graves’ (research proposal), circa 1975