Forster, JOHN

Forster, JOHN, an English political and historical writer, was born at Newcastle, 2d April 1812. He was educated for the bar, but early devoted himself to periodical writing. His political articles in the London Examiner, for which he commenced writing in 1833, attracted more attention than is usually bestowed on newspaper leaders, owing to their vigour and point, coupled with the love of truth, consistency, and outspoken honesty they displayed. Forster edited the Foreign Quarterly Review for some time; then for nearly a year, as Dickens's successor, the Daily News, and from 1847 to 1856 the Examiner. He was the author of many admirable biographical and historical essays, as the two volumes of Edinburgh and Quarterly articles reprinted in 1858, and an admirable series dealing with the times and statesmen of the English Commonwealth, under the titles History of the Grand Remonstrance (1860); Arrest of the Five Members (1860); Sir John Eliot, a Biography (1864); and Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (1840). His literary memoirs are The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith (1848; 2d and improved ed. 1854), accounted one of the best biographies in English literature; Walter Savage Landor (2 vols. 1868); The Life of Charles Dickens (3 vols. 1871-74); and the first volume of a Life of Swift (1875). His life of Dickens was assailed as having exposed with too great frankness the failings of his hero; a more valid objection is that in the method of treatment adopted the biographer is almost as prominent as his subject. Forster's style is clear and forcible. He himself was an indefatigable student and a constant and devoted friend. He was appointed secretary to the Commissioners in Lunacy in 1855, and a Commissioner in Lunacy in 1861. He died 1st February 1876.