Ian Watt

Ian Watt ( born March 9, 1917 in Windermere, † December 13, 1999 in Menlo Park), was a literary critic and literary historian.

Ian Watt went to school at the Dover County School for Boys and at St John's College, Cambridge. 1939, at age 22, he joined the British Army and served as an infantry lieutenant until he was arrested in January 1942 in Singapore by the Japanese army; he was regarded as "missing, presumed killed in action"; In 1946 he returned to England and left the army.

In 1947 he received his doctorate at Cambridge and in 1952 for assisting a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught English literature around ten years. In addition, he also taught at the University of British Columbia and the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

In 1964 he was appointed professor of English literature at Stanford University, where he taught until his retirement.

Watt was married to Ruth Mellinkoff Watt, with whom he had a son ( George W ) and a daughter ( Josephine Reed ) had.

Works

• 2002: The Literary Imagination: Selected Essays. University of Washington Press. ISBN 0930664248 ( as editor, along with Bruce Thompson)
• 1979: Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. University of California Press. ISBN 0520044053
• 1973: Conrad's " Secret Agent " ( Casebook ). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0333079876 (as Editor)
• 1963: Jane Austen (20th Century Views). Prentice- Hall. ISBN 0130537691
• 1957: The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Pimlico. ISBN 0712664270