Forster, John (1812–76), was editor of
Foreign Quarterly Review, 1842–3, the
Daily News, 1846, and the
Examiner, 1847–55. He was the literary associate and close friend of Leigh
Hunt, C.
Lamb, W. S.
Landor,
Bulwer-Lytton, and
Dickens: from 1837 on he read in MS or proof everything Dickens wrote. His earliest biographical work,
Lives of Eminent British Statesmen (1836–9) in Lardner's
Cyclopedia, was followed by various political lives partly reprinted as
Historical and Biographical Essays (1858). His popular literary biographies include
Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith (1848; rev. 2 vols, 1854),
Landor (2 vols, 1869),
Dickens (3 vols, 1872–4), and the first volume of a scholarly life of
Swift (1875). He is recognized as the first professional biographer of 19th-cent. England. Landor, Dickens, and
Carlyle appointed him their literary executor.
