John Forster (1812-76) and the making of Victorian Literature

John Forster (1812-1876) is a major figure in nineteenth-century literary culture, and his writing, criticism and entrepreneurship placed him at the heart of the changes that took place in the Victorian literary marketplace. Through his networks of friendship and advice with major authors such as Dickens and Browning; as editor of The Examiner, the most influential radical periodical of the period, author of literary biographies and contributor to many important journals, and as literary adviser to the publishers Chapman and Hall, he played a leading role in the creation and reception of nineteenth-century fiction, drama and poetry, and changed decisively the possibilities and ethos of the modern literary profession.

John Forster was also a major donor to the Victoria and Albert Museum, gifting it one of its most renowned collections in the form of his extensive library, which included the manuscripts of most of Dickens's novels, together with a treasure-house of letters, proofs and contracts, as well as a library 'so large ...that it is difficult to do justice to the range of material' (V&A website). The Forster collection is the world's single most important collection of Dickens materials, but this is just the tip of a large iceberg, and can overshadow the role played by Forster himself in creating Victorian literature and culture as editor and entrepreneur.

Despite his centrality to British literary life for almost half a century, the shaping influence of the gifts of his library, artworks and theatre collection to the V&A, and the immense popular influence of his Life of Dickens (1872-4), he is a figure now known mainly by specialists. This project seeks both to understand Forster's complex, shaping role in the dynamic and often conflicted world of Victorian literary culture and to bring that understanding to new publics.

The V&A's Forster collection shows how his close friendships (with Dickens, Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Browning, Carlyle, Tennyson, Bulwer Lytton and others) and such professional organisations as the Guild of Literature and Art, played important roles in the creation of what Robert L. Patten has recently called 'the birth of the Industrial-Age Author'. James A. Davies's biography of Forster (John Forster: a Literary Life, Leicester, 1983) gives a good sense of the range of Forster's literary career and friendships but does not attempt a wider cultural understanding of his role or significance in shaping the V&A. Developments in literary and cultural history and theory since Davies's work enable a more fully interdisciplinary and innovative understanding of Forster's work and its impact. Helena Langford (PhD UCL, 2011) has done invaluable work on the interactions of the Forster holdings at the V&A with his own practice as a literary and historical biographer.

This project builds on and extends this work through integrating such specific activities as biography into a larger sense of the different modes in which he operated and their relationship to his overarching identity as a cultural entrepreneur. There is an immensely rich archive of material and, while we would give clear direction to the student about the project's overall structure and interdisciplinary parameters, we would encourage him or her to be creative and original in exploring Forster's work and in defining the most suggestive and dynamic aspects to explore for twenty-first century readers and publics. As we approach the 150th anniversary of Dickens's death in 2020, this project will place the V&A in a uniquely strong position not only to capitalise on its remarkable holdings of Dickens-related material but also to recognise the role of Forster's life and work to the legacy of Dickens--and of the Museum itself. Its aim would be to begin to do justice both to the remarkable man behind the Dickens holdings in the V&A and to the project of literary professionalism and cultural preservation that underlies them.