Arthur Waugh

Arthur Waugh (27 August 1866 – 26 June 1943) was an English author, literary critic and publisher. He was the father of the authors Alec Waugh and Evelyn Waugh. Early life Waugh was born in Midsomer Norton, Somerset, in 1866, elder son of prosperous country physician Alexander Waugh (1840-1906), who bullied his wife and children and became known in the Waugh family as "the Brute", and Annie (née Morgan), of a strict Plymouth Brethren background. Waugh's mother Annie was a second cousin of Edmund Gosse, her mother, Anne, being first cousin of the naturalist Philip Henry Gosse. His great-grandfather Rev. Alexander Waugh (1754–1827) was a minister in the Secession Church of Scotland who helped found the London Missionary Society and was one of the leading Nonconformist preachers of his day. He was educated at Sherborne School, Sherborne, Dorset, and New College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry for a ballad on the subject of Gordon of Khartoum in 1888. Career In 1892, he wrote the first biography of the poet Alfred Tennyson, which was published by William Heineman. In 1894, he contributed to the first issue of the magazine The Yellow Book. In 1899 he wrote the rhymes for a children's book with illustrations by William Nicholson. In 1900 Waugh wrote and published Robert Browning, a brief biography of the author of the same name. He was also a regular correspondent for the magazine The New York Critic, and from 1906 to 1931, he was a literary critic for the London newspaper The Daily Telegraph.