John Forster

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, Newcastle upon Tyne, second of four children of Unitarian cattle-dealer Robert Forster (died 1836) and Mary (c. 1780-1852), daughter of a Gallowgate dairy farm keeper. Forster's great-grandfather had been "a man of some considerable substance", a landowner at Corsenside in Northumberland; his grandfather Christopher (the third son) inherited nothing, so this branch became butchers and cattle-dealers in Newcastle. Forster's father "married beneath himself" despite his wife being "a gem of a woman"; she was remembered by a nephew as "kind and affectionate", giving her impoverished sister's children cast-off clothing. The Forsters subsequently lived on Low Friar Street and at 5, Green Court, all "in the centre of old Newcastle... a jumble of houses, works and potteries". John Forster was educated in classics and in mathematics at The Royal Grammar School. Forster in 1828 matriculated at the University of Cambridge, but after only a month's residence there he moved to London, where he attended classes at University College London, and entered the Inner Temple. In London, Forster successfully contributed to The True Sun, The Morning Chronicle and The Examiner, for which he was literary and dramatic critic. An extract of his Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth (1836–1839) was published in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Forster subsequently published the entire work separately in 1840, with his Treatise on the Popular Progress in English History, both of which were publicly commended, and as a consequence of which Forster became reputable amongst London literary society. He therein became a friend of Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, W. S. Landor, Charles Dickens (every work by whom he read in manuscript), and Edward Bulwer-Lytton (whom he monetarily patronised during the latter's childhood ). Forster was engaged to Letitia Landon, but after their relationship was broken off he instead married Eliza, the widow of Henry Colburn.