John Forster (biographer)

John Forster (2 April 1812 – 2 February 1876) was an English biographer, essayist, historian, literary and drama critic, and newspaper editor. Forster, a close friend of Charles Dickens, is mainly remembered for his 3-volume, Dickens biography, published by Chapman & Hall from 1872 to 1874.

Quotes

• Oliver Goldsmith, whose life and adventures should be known to all who know his writings, must be held to have succeeded in nothing that his friends would have had him succeed in. He was intended for a clergyman, and was rejected when he applied for orders; he practiced as a physician, and never made what would have paid for a degree; what he was not asked or expected to do, was to write, but he wrote and paid the penalty. His existence was a continued privation. The days were few, in which he had resources for the night, or dared to look forward to the morrow.
  • "The Author to the Reader". The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith (3rd ed.). London: Bradbury and Evans. 1855. pp. 1–4.  (quote from pp. 1–2; 1st edition 1848)

• ... No one conversant with this period of our history can have failed to be struck by the extraordinary lawlessness that prevailed at sea. The coasts for the most part were without watch or defence. The dissolute extravagance of the court took no heed of the subject's claim to protection; and if a needy lord could fill his spendthrift purse for a day by help of a maritime freebooter, the honest merchant was helpless against the plunderer and pirate.
  As a consequence, the coasts swarmed with such; but of all who had so obtained infamous distinction, the most notorious was Captain John Nutt. This man had possessed himself of several pirate ships,and no point along the Irish or western sea was safe from his attacks.
  • Sir John Eliot: A Biography. 1590-1632, Volume 1 (2nd ed.). London: Chapman & Hall. 1872. pp. 25–26.  (1st edition 1864 — See John Eliot (statesman).)

• ... It is the fact that teaches, and not any sermonizing drawn from it. Oliver Twist is the history of a child born in a workhouse and brought up by parish overseers, and there is nothing introduced that is out of keeping with the design.
  • The Life of Charles Dickens, Volume 1. Volume 781 of Everyman's Library. C. Palmer. 1928. p. 114.  1st edition of Volume 1 published in 1872; 1928 book edited and annotated with an introduction by James William Thomas Ley (1879–1943)

• ... If to owe nothing to other men is to be original, a more original man than Swift never lived; but, with the wonderful subtlety of thought so rarely joined to the same robustness of intellect which placed his wit and philosophy on the level of Rabelais, he had the same habit as the great Frenchman of turning things inside out, and putting away decencies as if they were shows or hypocrisies. In both it led to an insufferable coarseness.
  • The Life of Jonathan Swift, Volume the First, 1667–1711. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1876. p. 164. 

Quotes about John Forster

• By 1831, when Forster was 18 and Lamb 55, they had met and become friends. Lamb was then living in retirement at Edmonton as a distinguished literary man. Like Leigh Hunt he would have attracted Forster because of his links with the recent and glamorous past, for Lamb had known the young Wordsworth, had known Southey and Hazlitt; Coleridge had been his 'fifty years old friend without a dissension'. ... He was a fine critic and a great essayist. His sister was a lunatic and he himself a saddened, garrulous, humorous, and gregarious bachelor who often drank too much.
  Drinking and gregarious gossiping suited the young Forster, and Forster suited Lamb, who treated him with a mixture of patronage, affection and reliance.
  • James A. Davies, John Forster, a Literary Life. Rowman & Littlefield. 1983. p. 25. ISBN 0389203912. 

• So much has been said by Forster himself in the Life about the dramatic performances in aid of the comparatively short-lived Guild of Literature and Art, that to do more than touch upon it here would be superfluous. Of course its real founder was Dickens himself, seconded, though I fancy with not quite so much enthusiasm, by Bulwer Lytton, Forster, Mr. (afterwards Sir) John Tenniel, E. M. Ward, R.A., Clarkson Stansfield, and many others in the world of Literature and Art.
  • Richard Renton, John Forster and His Friendships. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd. 1913. pp. 70–71. 

• It was Forster who suggested that Little Nell should die. Dickens took this and ran with it — he thought it was brilliant.
  • Claire Tomalin, (May 18, 2022)"Meet the Author - Charles Dickens by Claire Tomalin". Liam, YouTube. (BBC News, quote at 5:44 of 7:24 — See The Old Curiosity Shop.)

External links

• Forster, John" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). 1911.
• Forster, John (1812-1876). Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900. 20.
• Forster Collection. V&A South Kensington, V&A Museums.