John Forster (biographer)
John Forster (2 April 1812 – 2 February 1876) was a Victorian English biographer and literary critic.
Life
Forster was born at "a little yellow house" in Fenkle Street,
In London, Forster successfully contributed to
Forster in 1843 was called to the bar, but he did not ever practise as a lawyer.
Forster in 1855 was appointed secretary to the Lunacy Commission and, from 1861 to 1872, held the office of a Commissioner in Lunacy.[7] His valuable collection of manuscripts, including original copies of Charles Dickens's novels, together with his books and pictures, was bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum.
Works
For some years he edited the
In 1848 appeared his admirable Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith (revised 1854). Continuing his researches into English history under the early Stuarts, he published in 1860 the Arrest of the Five Members by Charles I: a Chapter of English History rewritten, and The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, with an Introductory Essay on English Freedom. These were followed by his Sir John Eliot: a Biography (1864), elaborated from one of his earlier studies for the Lives of Eminent British Statesmen.
In 1868 appeared his Life of Landor. On the death of his friend Alexander Dyce, Forster undertook the publication of his third edition of Shakespeare. For several years he had been collecting materials for a life of Jonathan Swift, but he interrupted his studies in this direction to write his standard Life of Charles Dickens. He had long been intimate with the novelist, and it is by this work that John Forster is now chiefly remembered. The first volume appeared in 1872, and the biography was completed in 1874. It was clearly an important work for the late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing, who wrote, in his diary in January 1888, that, it was "a book I constantly take up for impulse, when work at a standstill".[8] A decade or so later, Gissing was asked to revise Forster's work, and this was published, by Chapman and Hall, in October 1902.
Towards the close of 1875 the first volume of his Life of Swift was published; and he had made some progress in the preparation of the second at the time of his death.
In fiction
Forster has been fictionalised in several recent
Notes
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9911. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ John Forster and his Friendships, Richard Renton, Chapman & Hall, 1912, p. 4
- ^ John Forster: A Literary Life, James A. Davies, Barnes & Noble, 1983, pp. 3-4
- ^ "Biographies of Legal Lunacy Commissioners and Secretaries 1832- 1912". Archived from the original on 26 October 2007. Retrieved 26 October 2007.
- ^ "Forster, John (FRSR826J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Dinah Birch (2009). The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Seventh Edition. Oxford University Press. p. 385.
- ISBN 9780389203919.
- ^ Coustillas, Pierre ed. London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: the Diary of George Gissing, Novelist. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978, p.20.
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Forster, John". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
External links
- Works by John Forster at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John Forster at Internet Archive
- Works by John Forster at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Life of Charles Dickens by John Forster
- Forster Collection in the National Art Library
- Philip V. Allingham, John Forster: Essayist, Historian, and Editor, 1812–1876 at the Victorian Web
- The Life of Charles Dickens volume I 1876 edition
- The Life of Charles Dickens volume II 1876 edition
- New International Encyclopedia. 1905. .