View source for Forrest Reid

{{Short description|Irish novelist, literary critic and translator (1875–1947)}}
{{Use Hiberno-English|date=May 2023}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2024}}
'''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 noted [[Ulster]] novelist, being awarded the 1944 [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]] for his novel ''Young Tom''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.forrestreid.com/ |title=Forrest Reid: homepage |publisher=forrestreid.com |accessdate=2015-04-25 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402121138/http://www.forrestreid.com/ |archivedate=2 April 2015 |df=dmy-all }}</ref>

==Early life and education==
Born in Belfast, he was the youngest son of a [[Protestant]] family of twelve, six of whom survived. He was educated at the [[Royal Belfast Academical Institution]]. His father, Robert Reid (1825–1881), was the manager of a felt works, having failed as a shipowner at [[Liverpool]],<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/SpecialCollections/FileStore/Filetoupload,809270,en.pdf |title=The Correspondence of E. M. Forster and Forrest Reid: Content and Implications of a New Literary Archive |access-date=17 December 2021 |archive-date=24 June 2021 |first1=Brian G |last1=Caraher |first2=Emma |last2=Hegarty |website=[[Queen's University Belfast]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624082751/https://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/SpecialCollections/FileStore/Filetoupload,809270,en.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> 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 the [[54th Regiment of Foot]], of the landed gentry Parr family of [[Shropshire]], related to [[Catherine Parr]], last wife of [[Henry VIII of England|King Henry VIII]].<ref>''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</ref><ref>''The Green Avenue: The Life and Writings of Forrest Reid, 1875-1947'', Brian Taylor, Cambridge University Press, 1980, p. 8</ref><ref>{{Cite ODNB|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-35714|isbn = 978-0-19-861412-8|doi = 10.1093/ref:odnb/35714|title = The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|year = 2004}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/cddb76c9-fbe6-3b99-9f7a-7a2fe31bbabb|title=Forrest Reid Collection - Archives Hub|access-date=17 December 2021|archive-date=21 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121193057/https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/cddb76c9-fbe6-3b99-9f7a-7a2fe31bbabb|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="UE">{{cite web | title=Guide to Print Collections – Forrest Reid Collection | work=University of Exeter | url=http://library.exeter.ac.uk/special/guides/books/reid.html | accessdate=5 July 2009 | archive-date=8 December 2019 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208094641/http://library.exeter.ac.uk/special/guides/books/reid.html | url-status=live }}</ref> [[File:Forrest Reid plaque, Belfast - geograph.org.uk - 1620230.jpg|right|thumb|100px|A plaque reading "Forrest Reid lived here 1924–1947" on a house at 13 Ormiston Crescent, Belfast.]] Reid entered [[Christ's College, Cambridge]], in 1905, graduating BA in medieval and modern languages in 1908. He returned to Belfast, and met [[E. 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==
As well as his fiction, Reid also translated poems from the ''[[Greek Anthology]]'' (''Greek Authors'' (Faber, 1943)). His study of the work of [[W. 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 English [[Woodcut|woodcut artists]] of the 1860s (''Illustrators of the Sixties'' (1928)); his collection of original illustrations from that time is housed in the [[Ashmolean Museum]], [[Oxford]].

He was a close friend of [[Walter 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 novelist [[Stephen Gilbert (novelist)|Stephen Gilbert]], and had good connections to the [[Bloomsbury Group]] of writers. Reid was a founding member of the [[Imperial Art League]] (later the [[Artists League of Great Britain]]). Reid was also a close friend of [[Arthur Greeves]], the artist known to be [[C. S. Lewis]]'s best friend. Greeves painted several portraits of Reid, now all in the possession of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.<ref>{{cite web | title=Forrest Reid | work=Dictionary of Ulster Biography | year=1993 | url=http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/1452 | accessdate=5 July 2009 | archive-date=24 November 2012 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121124004221/http://www.newulsterbiography.co.uk/index.php/home/viewPerson/1452 | url-status=live }}</ref>

==Critical standing==
A "Forrest Reid Collection" is held at the [[University of Exeter]], consisting of first editions of all his works and books about Reid. Many of his original manuscripts are in the archives of the [[Belfast 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.<ref>[http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/FileStore/Filetoupload,139634,en.pdf Detailed listing of Forrest Reid Manuscripts held at Queen's University Belfast] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110613170245/http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/FileStore/Filetoupload,139634,en.pdf |date=13 June 2011 }}</ref>

==Works==
===Fiction===
{{div col}}
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100614109 ''The Kingdom of Twilight''] (1904)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001377185 ''The Garden God – A Tale of Two Boys''] (1905)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100670953 ''The Bracknels – A Family Chronicle''] (1911), revised as ''Denis Bracknel'' (1947)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007691406 ''Following Darkness''] (1912)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007691407 ''The Gentle Lover – A Comedy of Middle Age''] (1913)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100203411 ''At the Door of the Gate''] (1915)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007691827 ''The Spring Song''] (1916)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100681482 ''A Garden by the Sea''] (1918)(stories)
* ''Pirates of the Spring'' (1919)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006541374 ''Pender among the Residents''] (1922)
* ''Demophon – a Traveller's Tale'' (1927)
* ''Uncle Stephen'' (1931)
* ''Brian Westby'' (1934)
* ''The Retreat'' (1936)
* ''Peter Waring'' (1937)
* ''Young Tom'' (1944)
{{div col end}}
Out-of-copyright works (pre-1930s) may be available at https://www.gutenberg.org Search for the author and/or the title.

=== Autobiography ===

* ''Apostate'' (1926)
* ''Private Road'' (1940)

===Reissue editions===
Beginning in 2007, [[Valancourt Books]] began 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==
*[[List of Northern Irish writers]]

== References ==
{{Reflist|25em}}
* Paul Goldman and Brian Taylor, ''Retrospective Adventures: Forrest Reid, Author and Collector'' (Scholar Press, 1998)
* Colin Cruise, "Error & [[Eros (love)|Eros]]: The Fiction of Forrest Reid", ''Sex, Nation & Dissent'' ([[Cork University]] Press, 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 in ''Forces and Themes in Ulster Fiction'' (Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield; Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1974), pp.&nbsp;139–48, 197–211
* [[Eamonn Hughes]], "Ulster of the Senses", ''Fortnight'' #306 (May 1992) – essay about Reid's autobiography

== External links==
{{Wikiquote}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=49537 |name=Forest Reid}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Reid, Forrest|name=Forrest Reid|author=yes}}
* {{Librivox author |id=13485}}
* Forrest Reid [https://web.archive.org/web/20150402121138/http://www.forrestreid.com/ website], including biography, photographs and links 
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20160304113541/http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/TheLibrary/FileStore/Filetoupload,312674,en.pdf Catalogue from the Forrest Reid/Stephen Gilbert exhibition] (Queen's University Belfast, 2008) 
* [http://www.valancourtbooks.com/forrest-reid.html Forrest Reid] at Valancourt Books
* {{cite TIWW |article= Reid, Forrest|page=216 }}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reid, Forrest}}
[[Category:1875 births]]
[[Category:1947 deaths]]
[[Category:Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:Irish literary critics]]
[[Category:James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients]]
[[Category:Gay writers from Northern Ireland]]
[[Category:Male writers from Northern Ireland]]
[[Category:Writers from Belfast]]