Alaric Alfred Watts (18 February 1825 – 1901), best known as A. A. Watts, was a British government clerk, spiritualist and writer.
He was educated at University College School and worked as a clerk at the Inland Revenue Office. He was the son of Alaric Alexander Watts. In 1859 he married Anna Mary Howitt. Watts was a convinced spiritualist. In 1882 with his friend William Stainton Moses, he formed The Ghost Club. He was a member of the London Spiritualist Alliance.
Watts was member of the Society for Psychical Research. He resigned after some of its members such as Eleanor Sidgwick dismissed the medium William Eglinton as fraudulent.
Watts was also a poet, publishing, jointly with his wife, a volume entitled Aurora: a volume of verse.
Publications
- Aurora: A Volume of Verse (1875)
- Alaric Watts: A Narrative of His Life (Volume 1, Volume 2 1884)
References
- Boase, Frederic. (1921). Modern English Biography: (Supplement v.1-3). Netherton and Worth. p. 2273
- "Alaric Alfred Watts". Dickens Journals Online.
- Bevis, Matthew. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry. Oxford University Press. p. 432. ISBN 978-0198713715
- Brock, William Hodson. (2008). William Crookes (1832-1919) and the Commercialization of Science. Science, Technology, and Culture, 1700-1945. Ashgate Publishing. p. 440. ISBN 0-7546-6322-1
- Luckhurst, Roger. (2012). The Mummy's Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy. Oxford University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-0-19-969871-4
- Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0521347679
- Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0521347679
- Watts, Alaric Alfred; Howitt, Anna Mary (1875). Aurora; a volume of verse. London: King. Archived from the original on 30 November 2016.