John Forster was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 biographer and critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

 and a friend of author Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

.

Life

He was born at Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne

Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...

. His father, a Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 who belonged to the junior branch of a Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

 family, was a cattle-dealer. Well grounded in classics and mathematics

Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

 at The Royal Grammar School

Royal Grammar School, Newcastle

Royal Grammar School Newcastle upon Tyne, known locally and often abbreviated as RGS, is a long-established co-educational, independent school in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It gained its Royal Charter under Queen Elizabeth I...

, Forster was sent in 1828 to the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, but after only a month's residence he moved to London, where he attended classes at University College

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, and entered the Inner Temple

Inner Temple

The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...

.

His main interests were literary. He contributed to The True Sun, The Morning Chronicle and The Examiner, of which he was literary and dramatic critic; and the influence of his powerful individuality soon made itself felt. Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (1836-1839) appeared partly in Nathaniel Lardner's Cyclopaedia. Forster published the work separately in 1840 with a Treatise on the Popular Progress in English History. It obtained immediate recognition, making Forster a prominent figure in a distinguished circle of literary men which included Leigh Hunt, Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...

, Thomas Noon Talfourd

Thomas Noon Talfourd

Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, SL , was an English judge and author.The son of a well-to-do brewer, he was born at Reading, Berkshire ....

, Albany Fonblanque

Albany Fonblanque

Albany William Fonblanque was a celebrated English journalist and by his own example a reformer of that profession.-Family:Albany Fonblanque was descended from a noble French Huguenot family, the de Greniers of Languedoc, and was born in London....

, Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...

, Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

, Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...

 and Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

.

Forster is said to have been engaged to Letitia Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon , English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L. E. L.- Early life :...

, but the engagement was broken off, and she married George Maclean. In 1843, Forster was called to the Bar

Bar association

A bar association is a professional body of lawyers. Some bar associations are responsible for the regulation of the legal profession in their jurisdiction; others are professional organizations dedicated to serving their members; in many cases, they are both...

, but he never practised as a lawyer.

In 1858, Forster had been appointed secretary to the Lunacy Commission and, from 1861 to 1872, held the office of a Commissioner in Lunacy. His valuable collection of manuscripts, including the original copies of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

's novels

English novel

The English novel is an important part of English literature.-Early novels in English:A number of works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English. See the article First novel in English.-Romantic novel:...

, together with his books and pictures, was bequeathed to the South Kensington Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

.

Works

For some years he edited the Foreign Quarterly Review; in 1846, on the retirement of Charles Dickens, he took over the Daily News; and, from 1847 to 1856 he edited the Examiner. From 1836 onwards, he contributed to the Edinburgh Quarterly and Foreign Quarterly Reviews a variety of articles, some of which were republished in two volumes of Biographical and Historical Essays (1858).

In 1848 appeared his admirable Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...

(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

Alexander Dyce

Alexander Dyce was a Scottish dramatic editor and literary historian.He was born in Edinburgh and received his early education at the high school there, before becoming a student at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1819...

, Forster undertook the publication of his third edition of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. For several years he had been collecting materials for a life of Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

, 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.

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 neo-Victorian

Neo-Victorian

Neo-Victorian is an aesthetic movement which amalgamates Victorian and Edwardian aesthetic sensibilities with modern principles and technologies...

 novels which centre on Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

. This includes The Last Dickens

The Last Dickens

The Last Dickens is a novel by Matthew Pearl published by Random House. It is a work of historical and literary fiction. The novel is a Washington Post Critics' Pick. It contains some characters from The Dante Club.-Plot summary:...

 by Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl

Matthew Pearl is an American novelist and educator. His novels include The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens and have been published in more than 40 countries.-Biography:...

 (2009), Wanting (novel)

Wanting (novel)

-Plot summary:Wanting cuts between two stories based on real historical figures under the central theme of 'wanting', and is set in both nineteenth century Tasmania and Britain...

 by Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan

Richard Flanagan is a novelist from Tasmania, Australia.-Early life:Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three...

 (2008), Girl in a Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold (2008, renamed Michael O'Rourke) and Drood by Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons is an American author most widely known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos, and for his Locus-winning Ilium/Olympos cycle....

 (2009).

External links

• 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
  Victorian Web
  The Victorian Web is an online resource of information about the Victorian Era created at Brown University and at the University Scholars Program of the National University of Singapore....