Identity area
Reference code
Watson/5/13
Unique identifier
Title
Date(s)
- 1977 (Creation)
Level of description
Subseries
Extent and medium
Paper.
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
First published 1977. This subseries contains research material, typescripts, proofs, correspondence and reviews; the reviews section includes some printed correspondence in which George Watson receives and responds to criticism, and there is also a selection of other writing by Watson that he evidently considered of an intellectual piece with the book.
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RESEARCH MATERIAL
Photocopied pages from 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?' by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1935)
Cutting of a David Leigh article about Geronwy Rees, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt ('Guardian', 14 January 1980)
Cutting of a review by Neil Ascherson of 'The Climate of Treason' by Andrew Boyle ('London Review of Books', 7 February 1980)
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Composite typescript of the book under its earlier title 'The Literature of Politics in Modern England', with manuscript corrections
Composite typescript with manuscript corrections
Proofs with manuscript corrections
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RELATED WRITING
Notes on Hewlett Johnson, perhaps towards a review
'More on the Odd Man among Spies' (which would be reversioned as a letter published in 'The London Review of Books' on 20 March 1980)
'The Higher Cosiness', review of Richard Hoggart's 'An English Temper' ('Times Literary Supplement', 26 March 1982)
'All sons of Adam', review of Nancy Stepan's 'The Idea of Race in Science' ('Financial Times', 8 January 1983) (N.B. a typescript draft of this review appears in the 'Genocide' subseries)
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CORRESPONDENCE
BATTESTIN, Ruthe & Martin
BOOTH, Wayne
BOOTMAN, Bram
BOYLE, Andrew
BRACHER, Karl Dietrich
BURDEN, Dennis
BURNS, T F
CAREY, John
CONRAD, Ruth
COWEN, Zelman
DEWITTE, Jacques
FARMILOE, T M
FLEW, Antony
GAY, Peter
GERMER, Rudolf
GÖMÖRI, George
GORDON, Michael
GROSS, John
HOMBERGER, Eric
HOWARTH, T E B
JAROSZYŃSKI, Andrzej
JEFFREYS, Harold
JOSEPH, A N
KEMP, Harry
KERMODE, Frank
LABEDZ, Leopold
LASKY, Melvin Jonah
LEE, Arthur Guy
MALHOTRA, Rajiv
MENDELSON, Edward
MIDGLEY, Mary
MILLER, Karl
MIRFIN, Derick
MOORE, Richard
MOORE, Steven
NORTH, Maurice
OLSON, Betsy
PALMER, John E
PELLING, Henry Mathison
POOLE, Roger
REYNOLDS, Barbara
RICKS, Christopher Bruce
ROBSON, William Wallace
ROSE, E J B
SCHMIDT, Michael
SEEAR, Beatrice Nancy
SELDON, Arthur
SITESH, Aruna
SMITH, Jonathan
STEEL, David
STOREY, Graham
SWANN, Charles
TYRRELL, R Emmett
WELBOURN, D B
WILES, Peter
WINAND-JACQUEMIN, Marie-Antoinette
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REVIEWS