He was a talented and popular poet who contributed to 'The
Yellow Book' a publication featuring poetry, art and prose during the late 1800s. However, possibly because of his
criticism of the Boer Wars, Watson was not chosen as Poet Laureate. He was married to Adeline Maureen nee Pring
and the couple had two daughters.
During the First World War Watson's very patriotic poems earned
him a knighthood in 1917. Largely forgotten after the War, Watson died on 13th
August 1935.
Watson’s collections of WW1 poetry were:
'A Hundred Poems' (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1921)
'The man who saw and other poems arising out of the war'
(Murray, London, 1917) – available as a free download on Archive
'The superhuman antagonists, and other poems' (Hodder and
Stoughton, London, 1919)
William Watson's poems also appeared in 23 anthologies of First World
War Poetry.
Source: Wikipedia and Catherine Reilly’s ‘English
Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography (St. Martin’s Press, New York,
1978) – p.330
