The Times/1943/Obituary/Arthur Waugh

AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER

Mr. Arthur Waugh, author and publisher, died on Saturday at Hampstead Lane, N. He was chairman of Chapman and Hall, Limited.

He was born on August 24, 1866, the son of a popular and well-known doctor of Midsomer Norton and Bath, Alexander Waugh. His reminiscences in "One Man's Road" of his early years are full of charm and humour, and in his talk he was always referring to his childhood and youth in the West Country. From Sherborne he went to New College, Oxford, and won the Newdigate prize for a poem on "Gordon in Africa." He was a good classical scholar, and kept up his reading to the end.

In 1890 he started his literary career in London, being first of all London correspondent to the New York Critic, and then editing the New Review. He was literary advisor to Kegan Paul and Co. from 1895 to 1902. Shortly after that he became chairman and managing director of Chapman and Hall, Limited, and also one of the principal reviewers on the staff of the Daily Telegraph. His literary interests were mostly in poetry. He wrote an excellent book on Tennyson, and edited Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," a biographical edition of Dickens, Milton, and Tennyson in "English Poets," and George Herbert in "The World's Classics." "Reticence in Literature is a typical volume of his essays. He also achieved some solid work in his masterly volume on the history of Chapman and Hall, Limited.

After the age of 60 he did rather less reviewing, and too a less active part in the affairs of Chapman and Hall; but, although he suffered from bronchial asthma, he never lost his genial vivacity, His affectionate pride in his two sons, Alec and Evelyn, entirely bridged any gulf that might have been presumed to exist between the literary standards of two writers so different from himself. Perhaps his best achievement was his autobiography, "One Man's Road," published in the autumn of 1931. He had a keen gusto for life and literature, and the literary recollections of his own life are a valuable contribution to the history of the period. In his own person he combined a real feeling for art with an aptitude for business and a shrewd judgment of his colleagues and assistants.