ABSTRACT
Rosamund Marriott Watson, also known as Graham R. Tomson, underwent a number of name changes during her writing career which may have served to track her marital adventures but did no service to the consolidation of a literary career. Hence her work disappeared from view very quickly after her death. Born in a suburb of London as Rosamund Ball, youngest daughter of an accountant and his wife, she was encouraged to read widely while growing up and began writing at an early age. Her father, a book-lover with an extensive private library, also wrote verse. Her mother died of uterine cancer in 1874 when Rosamund was 13; her father died in 1883. Her first publications (verse and journalism), signed ‘Mrs G. Armytage’, came after her marriage in 1879 to George Armytage, an attractive and wealthy Australian. The 19-year-old Rosamund was herself a stunningly attractive as well as highly intelligent woman. In 1884, when this early marriage was already showing signs of strain, she published her first volume of poetry, Tares, anonymously. When this marriage ended in divorce in 1887, she lost custody of her two daughters along with her husband. She then married the artist Arthur Graham Tomson, two months later had a son she called Graham, and began to publish under the pseudonym ‘Graham R. Tomson’.
