Ian Watt

Ian Watt (9 March 1917 – 13 December 1999) was a literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University. His The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957) is an important work in the history of the genre. Published in 1957, The Rise of the Novel is considered by many contemporary literary scholars as the seminal work on the origins of the novel, and an important study of literary realism. The book traces the rise of the modern novel to philosophical, economic and social trends and conditions that become prominent in the early 18th century.

Born 9 March 1917, in Windermere, Westmorland in England, Watt was educated at the Dover County School for Boys and at St John's College, Cambridge, where he earned first-class honours in English.

Watt joined the British Army at the age of 22 and served with distinction in the Second World War as an infantry lieutenant from 1939 to 1946. He was wounded in the Battle of Singapore in February 1942 and listed as 'missing, presumed killed in action'.

He had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and remained at the Changi Prison until 1945, working with other prisoners on the construction of the Burma Railway which crossed Thailand, a feat that inspired the Pierre Boulle book The Bridge over the River Kwai, and the film adaptation, The Bridge on the River Kwai by David Lean. Watt criticised both the book and the film for the liberties they took with the historical details of the prisoner of war experience and, more subtly, their refusal to acknowledge the moral complexities of the situation. More than 12,000 prisoners died during the building of the railroad, most of them from disease, and Watt was critically ill from malnutrition for several years. "There was a period when I expected to die," Watt told the San Francisco Examiner in a 1979 interview. 'But I didn't know how sick I was until they gave me some of the vitamin pills that had just come into the camp. I remember being very surprised that I was considered sick enough to receive vitamins.'

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