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Forrest Reid

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Forrest Reid(24 June 1875,Belfast,Ireland; 4 January 1947,Warrenpoint,County Down,Northern Ireland) was an Irish novelist, literary critic and translator. He was a leading pre-war novelist of boyhood and is still acclaimed as a notedUlsternovelist, being awarded the 1944James Tait Black Memorial Prizefor his novelYoung Tom.[1]

Early life and education

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Born in Belfast, he was the youngest son of aProtestantfamily of twelve, six of whom survived. He was educated at theRoyal Belfast Academical Institution.His father, Robert Reid (1825–1881), was the manager of a felt works, having failed as a shipowner atLiverpool,[2]and came from a well-established upper-middle-class Ulster family; his mother, Frances Matilda, was his father's second wife. She was the daughter of Captain Robert Parr, of the54th Regiment of Foot,of the landed gentry Parr family ofShropshire,related toCatherine Parr,last wife ofKing Henry VIII.[3][4][5][6][7]

A plaque reading "Forrest Reid lived here 1924–1947" on a house at 13 Ormiston Crescent, Belfast.

Reid enteredChrist's College, Cambridge,in 1905, graduating BA in medieval and modern languages in 1908. He returned to Belfast, and metE. M. Forster,who remained a lifelong friend, in February 1912. After graduation Forster continued to visit Reid, who was then settled back in Belfast. In 1952, Forster traveled to Belfast to unveil a plaque commemorating Forrest Reid's life (at 13 Ormiston Crescent).

Works and influences

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As well as his fiction, Reid also translated poems from theGreek Anthology(Greek Authors(Faber, 1943)). His study of the work ofW. B. Yeats(W. B. Yeats: A Critical Study(1915)) has been acclaimed as one of the best critical studies of that poet. He also wrote the definitive work on the Englishwoodcut artistsof the 1860s (Illustrators of the Sixties(1928)); his collection of original illustrations from that time is housed in theAshmolean Museum,Oxford.

He was a close friend ofWalter de la Mare,whom he first met in 1913, and about whose fiction he published a perceptive book in 1929. Reid was also an influence on novelistStephen Gilbert,and had good connections to theBloomsbury Groupof writers. Reid was a founding member of theImperial Art League(later theArtists League of Great Britain). Reid was also a close friend ofArthur Greeves,the artist known to beC. S. Lewis's best friend. Greeves painted several portraits of Reid, now all in the possession of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.[8]

Critical standing

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A "Forrest Reid Collection" is held at theUniversity of Exeter,consisting of first editions of all his works and books about Reid. Many of his original manuscripts are in the archives of theBelfast Central Library.In 2008, Queen's University Belfast catalogued a large collection of Forrest Reid documentary material it had recently acquired, including many letters from E.M. Forster.[9]

Works

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Fiction

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Autobiography

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  • Apostate(1926)
  • Private Road(1940)

Reissue editions

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Beginning in 2007,Valancourt Booksbegan releasing editions of Reid's works, all containing new introductions by authors and scholars:

  • The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys(2007), edited with a foreword, introduction and notes by Michael Matthew Kaylor
  • The Tom Barber Trilogy(2011) hardcover two-volume set
  • The Spring Song(2013)
  • Following Darkness(2013)
  • Brian Westby(2013)
  • Denis Bracknel(2014)
  • Pender among the Residents(2014)
  • Uncle Stephen(2014)
  • The Retreat(2015)
  • Young Tom(2015)

See also

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References

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  1. ^"Forrest Reid: homepage".forrestreid. Archived fromthe originalon 2 April 2015.Retrieved25 April2015.
  2. ^Caraher, Brian G; Hegarty, Emma."The Correspondence of E. M. Forster and Forrest Reid: Content and Implications of a New Literary Archive"(PDF).Queen's University Belfast.Archived(PDF)from the original on 24 June 2021.Retrieved17 December2021.
  3. ^A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland Vol. II,4th edition, Sir Bernard Burke, 1863, p. 1153, Parr of Parr pedigree
  4. ^The Green Avenue: The Life and Writings of Forrest Reid, 1875-1947,Brian Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 8
  5. ^"The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography".Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004.doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35714.ISBN978-0-19-861412-8.(Subscription orUK public library membershiprequired.)
  6. ^"Forrest Reid Collection - Archives Hub".Archivedfrom the original on 21 January 2021.Retrieved17 December2021.
  7. ^"Guide to Print Collections – Forrest Reid Collection".University of Exeter.Archivedfrom the original on 8 December 2019.Retrieved5 July2009.
  8. ^"Forrest Reid".Dictionary of Ulster Biography.1993.Archivedfrom the original on 24 November 2012.Retrieved5 July2009.
  9. ^Detailed listing of Forrest Reid Manuscripts held at Queen's University BelfastArchived13 June 2011 at theWayback Machine
  • Paul Goldman and Brian Taylor,Retrospective Adventures: Forrest Reid, Author and Collector(Scholar Press, 1998)
  • Colin Cruise, "Error &Eros:The Fiction of Forrest Reid ",Sex, Nation & Dissent(Cork UniversityPress, 1997)
  • Brian Taylor,The Green Avenue: The Life and Writings of Forrest Reid,(Cambridge University Press,1980)
  • Russell Burlingham,Forrest Reid: A Portrait & A Study(Faber, 1953)
  • John Wilson Foster, critical readings of Forrest Reid inForces and Themes in Ulster Fiction(Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield; Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1974), pp. 139–48, 197–211
  • Eamonn Hughes,"Ulster of the Senses",Fortnight#306 (May 1992) – essay about Reid's autobiography
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