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

约翰·福斯特(1812-1876)是十九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时代文学市场发生变化的核心人物。通过他与狄更斯和布朗宁等主要作家的友谊和建议网络，作为那个时期最有影响力的激进杂志《审查者》的编辑，文学传记作者和许多重要期刊的撰稿人，作为查普曼和霍尔出版商的文学顾问，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赠者之一，他以其庞大的图书馆的形式赠送了维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆最著名的收藏品之一，其中包括狄更斯大部分小说的手稿，以及一个收藏信件、校样和合同的宝库，以及一个“如此之大……以至于很难公平对待材料范围”的图书馆(V&A网站)。福斯特文集是世界上最重要的狄更斯资料收藏，但这只是一座大冰山的一角，可能会让福斯特本人作为编辑和企业家在创造维多利亚时代文学和文化方面所起的作用黯然失色。尽管他在近半个世纪的时间里一直是英国文学生活的中心，他的图书馆、艺术品和戏剧收藏品对维多利亚与阿尔卑斯博物馆的礼物产生了影响，他的《狄更斯传》(1872-1840年)也产生了巨大的流行影响，但现在他是一个主要为专家所知的人物。海伦娜·朗福德(伦敦大学学院博士，2011)在福斯特家族在维多利亚与亚利桑那州的互动方面做了宝贵的工作，并结合自己作为文学和历史传记作家的实践。该项目通过将传记等具体活动与他的不同运作模式及其与他作为文化企业家的主要身份的关系的更广泛意义上的结合，建立并扩展了这项工作。随着2020年狄更斯逝世150周年的临近，这个项目将使维多利亚与阿尔卑斯博物馆处于独特的有利地位，不仅可以利用其与狄更斯相关的非凡藏品，还可以认识到福斯特的生活和工作对狄更斯遗产--以及博物馆本身--所起的作用。它的目的将是开始公正地对待狄更斯在维多利亚与阿尔卑斯加州的藏书背后的非凡人物，以及作为其基础的文学专业精神和文化保护项目。

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.