Watts-Dunton, Theodore

Watts-Dunton, Theodore (Walter Theodore Watts-Dunton), 1832–1914, English poet, novelist, and critic. A member of the staff of the Examiner (1874–76), he became editor of the Athenaeum (1876–98). He was the benefactor of Swinburne, whose life he organized and who lived with him from 1879 to 1909. Watts-Dunton edited many literary classics and contributed important articles to The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Among his works are The Coming of Love (1897); Aylwin (1898), a romantic novel about the Romani (Gypsies); The Christmas Dream (1901); and Old Familiar Faces (1916), a volume of recollections.

See biography by J. Douglas (1904, repr. 1973); M. Beerbohm, “No. 2 The Pines,” in And Even Now (1920); M. Panter-Downes, At the Pines (1971).

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