Edward Forster (writer)

Edward Forster FRS FSA (1769–1828) was an English cleric and miscellaneous writer.

Forster was born at Colchester, Essex, on 11 June 1769, the only son of Nathaniel Forster, D.D., rector of All Saints in that town. After receiving some instruction at home, he was sent to Norwich grammar school, then under his father's close friend Samuel Parr. On 5 May 1788 he matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford.

To renew contact with Parr, Forster took a house at Hatton, Warwickshire, where he resided for some time. Havin married, he ultimately became a member of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. on 21 February 1792, and entered Lincoln's Inn on 15 June of the same year. Deciding, however, to become a clergyman, he was ordained priest by Beilby Porteus, bishop of London, in 1796. He proceeded M.A. on 16 February 1797.

In 1803, Forster was presented to the rectory of Aston Somerville, Gloucestershire, by an old friend, Lord Somerville, who had procured for him the appointment of chaplain to the Duke of Newcastle in 1796. There was no parsonage-house on the living, and Forster settled in London, where his pulpit oratory was in demand. He was from 1800 to 1814 successively morning preacher at Berkeley and Grosvenor chapels; and at Park Street and King Street chapels, in which he shared the duty with Sydney Smith, Stanier Clarke, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, and other fashionable preachers.

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