Watts Phillips

Who was Watts Phillips?

Watts Phillips was a British illustrator, novelist and playwright best known for his play The Dead Heart which served as a model for Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

In a memoir, his sister Emma recalled that he had “many difficulties” in his life and waged “a gallant struggle against chequered fortune.” She described him as a “bright and buoyant character”, “a really brilliant, energetic man, who had many gifts and accomplishments, with a cheerful, undaunted spirit, which to the last helped him to encounter trials, and a vein of humour which was as much at the service of his friends as it was to that of the public.” Emma also noted that “at times he sank into fits of despondency, from which he suffered much.”

A friend wrote of him that, “Few men were quicker of temper, more bitter and sarcastic in anger – and very few were so ready to forget and forgive…he could never sleep after a quarrel…until there had been a reconciliation.”