Thomas Watson (poet)

Thomas Watson (1555–1592), English lyrical poet, was the son of William Watson (d.1559) and Anne Lee (d.1561).Alhiyari, Ibrahim, ‘Thomas Watson: New Biographical Evidence and his Translation of Antigone’, PhD Dissertation, Texas State University, May 2006, available online at: http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-04122006-154851/ He was educated at Winchester College and Oxford.The Oxford Companion to English Literature 7th ed, Edited- Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press 2009. Watson, Thomas pg. 1050. He then spent 7 years in France and Italy before studying law in London. Though he often signed his works with "student of law" he never practiced law, considering his true passion was literature.“Watson, Thomas.” British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary. 1952. Print.

His De remedio amoris, which was perhaps his earliest important composition, is lost, as is his "piece of work written in the commendation of women-kind", which was also in Latin verse. The earliest publication by Watson which has survived is a Latin version of the Antigone of Sophocles, issued in 1581, dedicated to Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel. The version also contains an appendix of Latin Allegorical poems and experiments in classical metres.

The following year Watson appears for the first time as an English poet in some verses prefixed to George Whetstone's Heptameron, and also in a...
Read More