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Author: Forrester, Charles Robert

Biography:

FORRESTER, Charles Robert (1803-50: ODNB), pseudonym A. Crowquill

The son of Robert Forrester,  a London notary, Charles Robert likewise became a lawyer and notary, with his office in the Royal Exchange, London. The name of his mother has not been confirmed by a birth record but she may well have been Mary Vallar, who married a Robert Forrester at St. Anne's, Soho, Westminster, on 30 Sept. 1792. On 17 Mar. 1830 Charles Robert Forrester married Ann Garratt, with whom he had four children. He did not need to write for a living but he wrote quite a lot and in a variety of modes, mainly light verse, essays, and short- and long-form fiction. His first novel, Castle Baynard by "Hal Willis, Student at Law," appeared in 1824; he contributed regularly to magazines and was on the staff of The New Monthly Magazine and Bentley's Miscellany in the late 1830s. All his publications were anonymous or pseudonymous. On occasion he collaborated with his brother Alfred Henry Forrester (1804-72), an illustrator and writer, the two of them sharing the pseudonym Henry Crowquill, which Alfred continued to use after Charles had stopped writing. He died of heart disease at his London home in Beaumont Square on 15 Jan. 1850. (ODNB 29 Sept. 2021; findmypast.com 29 Sept. 2021)

 

Other Names:

  • C. R. Forrester
 

Books written (5):

London: Thomas Hurst and W. Morgan, 1827
3rd edn. London: B. B. King, 1834
London: B. B. King, 1834
2nd edn. London: B. B. King, 1834
London: A. H. Baily and Co., 1835