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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

John Forster

 

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John Forster : Life of Charles Dickens

Henry James to Charles Eliot Norton, 4 February 1872: "You, like all the world here I suppose, have been reading Forster's Dickens. It interested, but disappointed me -- through having too many opinions and 'remarks' and not enough facts and documents."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

John Forster : The Life of Charles Dickens

Harriet Martineau, in letter of 20 March 1873: 'The Life of Dickens is far too exclusively occupied with his personal relations with Forster [...] Yet it has an interest, and is worth reading. In the second volume I am much struck by Dickens's hysterical restlessness [...] To how great an extent the women of his family are ignored in the book! The whole impression left by it is very melancholy.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Martineau      Print: Book

  

John Forster : [works]

'Dr. Sir. Poets tell us that love is blind ? I fear indifference is more so. It is many months since I sent you a slight gage d?amour; it is many years (do not be alarmed, I am still very young) since I first became acquainted with your worth and excellence. I have seen you ? met you ? read your works ? heard you speak ? listened, in a breathless state, to your eloquent and manly expression of the sentiments which you do honor; and still by no word or sign have I discovered that you recognized in me the giver of the simple worthless riding whip which I have often seen in your hand, and once (when you [ ] it) nearly touched.'

Unknown
Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens      Print: BookManuscript: Sheet

  

John Forster : Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, The

'Who writes the literary reviews in the Examiner? I hoped Mr Forster, because I was so much delighted with Oliver Goldsmith's life, and (long ago) with the Lives of the Statesmen &c; but people say he no longer writes the literary articles.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell      Print: Book

  

John Forster : Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth

'Who writes the literary reviews in the Examiner? I hoped Mr Forster, because I was so much delighted with Oliver Goldsmith's life, and (long ago) with the Lives of the Statesmen &c; but people say he no longer writes the literary articles.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell      Print: Book

  

John Forster : [review, probably in 'The Examiner' of 'Mary Barton']

'I try and find out the places where Mr Forster said I strained after common-place materials for effect, till the whole book dances before my eyes as a commonplace piece of effect'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell      Print: Serial / periodical

  

John Forster : Life of Charles Dickens, The

'I have just begun Forster's Life of Dickens again. I did not finish it before. I think that will start me off for the autumn. I want a fact book not a fiction book. There are some wonderful things in it. When Dickens finally left the blacking factory he so much hated, he wept. "With a relief so strange that it was like oppression, I went home".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Antonia White      Print: Book

 

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