Although now largely forgotten, Marriott Watson's contribution to Gothic horror during the latter part of the nineteenth century is notable for its romantic decadence.

The stories which appeared in such collections as Diogenes of London (1893) and The Heart of Miranda (1898) bear favourable comparison with those produced by fellow contemporaries Arthur Machen, Vincent O'Sullivan and M. P. Shiel.

[3] Educated at Christ Church Grammar School and Canterbury College, Marriott Watson left for England in 1885 to become a journalist.

[10] This resulted in a scandal, one which included the sudden changing of her established pen name from Graham R. Tomson to Rosamund Marriott Watson to honor her third husband, and cancelling a then forthcoming volume of poems.

Rosamund and Arthur Tomson officially divorced two years later[13] and for the rest of her life she remained with Marriott Watson as his common law wife.

[3] After the death of writer Stephen Crane in 1900, his companion Cora asked that Marriott Watson complete his unfinished novel The O'Ruddy, but he declined the offer.

[8] When Rosamund died in 1911, Marriott Watson tried to keep her work alive in the literary world; his novel Rosalind in Arden (1913) contained many references to her poetry.