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

约翰·福斯特（1812-1876）是19世纪文学文化的重要人物，他的写作、批评和创业精神使他成为维多利亚文学市场变革的核心。通过他与狄更斯和布朗宁等主要作家的友谊和建议的网络;作为该时期最有影响力的激进期刊《审查者》的编辑，文学传记的作者和许多重要期刊的撰稿人，以及出版商查普曼和霍尔的文学顾问，他在19世纪小说、戏剧和诗歌的创作和接受方面发挥了主导作用，并决定性地改变了现代文学职业的可能性和风气。约翰·福斯特也是维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆的主要捐助者，他以其庞大的图书馆的形式为该博物馆提供了最著名的藏品之一，其中包括大部分狄更斯小说的手稿，以及信件、证明和合同的宝库，以及一个“如此大..”的图书馆。很难对材料的范围做到公正“（V&A网站）。福斯特收藏是世界上最重要的狄更斯资料收藏，但这只是冰山一角，可以掩盖福斯特本人作为编辑和企业家在创造维多利亚文学和文化中所扮演的角色。尽管他在英国文学生活中占据了近半个世纪的中心地位，他的图书馆、艺术品和戏剧收藏对V&A的影响很大，他的《狄更斯传》（1872- 1874）对公众的影响也很大，但他现在主要是由专家们知道的。这个项目旨在了解福斯特在维多利亚文学文化的动态和经常冲突的世界中的复杂，塑造角色，并将这种理解带给新的公众。V&A的福斯特收藏展示了他的亲密友谊（与狄更斯、查尔斯·兰姆、利·亨特、布朗宁、卡莱尔、丁尼生、布尔沃·利顿等人合作）和文学艺术协会等专业组织，在罗伯特·L.彭定康最近称之为“工业时代作家的诞生”。James A.戴维斯的福斯特传记（John Forster：a Literary Life，莱斯特，1983）对福斯特的文学生涯和友谊的范围有了很好的了解，但并没有试图从更广泛的文化角度理解他在塑造V&A中的作用或意义。文学和文化的历史和理论的发展，因为戴维斯的工作，使更充分的跨学科和创新的理解福斯特的工作及其影响。海伦娜·兰福德（博士UCL，2011）在V&A的福斯特控股与他自己的实践作为一个文学和历史传记作家的互动做了宝贵的工作。这个项目建立在这项工作的基础上，并通过将传记等具体活动整合到他经营的不同模式及其与他作为文化企业家的总体身份的关系的更大意义上来扩展这项工作。有一个非常丰富的档案材料，而我们会给学生明确的方向，该项目的整体结构和跨学科的参数，我们会鼓励他或她是创造性和原创性的探索福斯特的工作，并在定义最具启发性和动态的方面，探索二十一世纪的读者和公众。随着2020年狄更斯逝世150周年的临近，这个项目将使V&A处于一个独特的有利地位，不仅可以利用其对狄更斯相关材料的卓越持有，而且还可以认识到福斯特的生活和工作对狄更斯和博物馆本身遗产的作用。它的目标将是开始公正对待V&A中狄更斯控股背后的杰出人物，以及作为其基础的文学专业主义和文化保护项目。

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.