H.E. Watts was an Indian-born journalist and author, who spent a decade or so in the Australian colonies during the 1850s and 1860s. The son of an East India Company civil servant, Watts was educated in England at Exeter Grammar School. When his plans of continuing to Oxford and embarking on a career in the East India Company army did not eventuate, he instead went to Calcutta to work as a journalist on the Englishman. Watts spent two periods in Australia. He initially arrived in Sydney, on the barque Anne Melhuish (from Calcutta), in December 1851. His movements are then unclear, however within a few years he was living in Sydney, where he edited two short-lived weeklies, the Englishman (1853-1854), and the Sydney Sketch-Book (1855). During this period he also contributed to the Sydney Morning Herald under the name 'Quill'. He then departed for England, before returning in 1859 to take up a position as joint editor of the Melbourne Argus, which he held with Gurney Patmore (q.v.) in the period 1859-1864. Perhaps due to his Tory beliefs and strongly held opinions, Watts's time at the Argus proved controversial, and in 1862 he was briefly stood down during the course of a libel action brought against the newspaper. In August 1864, soon after leaving the Argus, Watts appears to have had ambitions of entering politics, and he made initial steps to contest the seat of Polwarth and South Grenville at the 1864 Victorian elections. However, in the end he didn't seek nomination. In 1865 he briefly owned and edited the Geelong Advertiser.
Watts finally departed for England in ca. 1866, and within a few years joined the London Standard. From about this time he became a regular contributor to English newspapers and literary magazines, and he was also for a period London correspondent for the Melbourne Argus. Towards the end of his life he became well known for his translation of Don Juan and biography of Cervantes.
