British educator, journalist and historian
Sir George William David Stark Forrest (1845–1926) was a British educator, journalist and historian, in India from 1872 to 1900.[1]
Life
He was the second son of George Forrest VC, born at Nasirabad, Ajmer. He matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge in 1866, graduating B.A. in 1870.[2][3] He entered the Inner Temple in 1872, but was not called to the bar. He began to write for periodicals including the Saturday Review. As a journalist, he was known for work published in The Times, particularly a scoop in 1880 with the Battle of Maiwand.[3]
Forrest was appointed to Bombay Educational Department, late in 1872. He was Census Commissioner at Bombay in 1882. He was seconded to work on the Bombay Records, 1884-8, becoming Professor of English History, Elphinstone College, in 1887. He was Director, Bombay Records, in 1888, Assistant Secretary, Government of India, and Director, Government of India Records, 1894–1900.[2]
In bad health, Forrest returned to the United Kingdom in 1900.[1] He went in 1904 to Iffley Turn House just outside Oxford, was knighted in 1913, and died there on 28 January 1926.[3]
Works
Forrest published books:[2]
- Selections from the Official Writings of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884)[1]
- Selections from the State Papers in the Foreign Department (1890)[1]
- The Administration of the Marquis of Lansdowne as Viceroy and Governor (1894)[4]
- Sepoy Generals (1901)[5]
- Cities of India Past and Present (1903)[6]
- History of the Indian Mutiny (1904–1912, 3 vols.), a documentary history.[1] John Laband wrote in 1976 of historiography of the Indian rebellion of 1857 in terms of "the voluminous literature of British historians such as Kaye, Holmes and G. W. Forrest."[7] Rudrangshu Mukherjee, writing in 2008, stated that "Much of what we write and say today about 1857 is possible because of the work of [Surendra Nath Sen, Ramesh Chundra Majumdar and S B Chaudhuri] and of the great narratives produced in the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century by Charles Ball, John Kaye, G W Forrest and others."[8]
- Selections from the Travels and Journals Preserved in the Bombay Secretariat (1906)[9]
- Life of Field-Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain, G.C.B., G.C.S.I. (1909),[10] on Neville Bowles Chamberlain.
- Selections from the State Papers of the Governors-General of India: Warren Hastings (2 vols., 1910)[1]
- Life of Lord Roberts (1914)[1]
- The Life of Lord Clive (2 vols., 1918)[1]
- Selections from the State Papers of the Governors-General of India: Lord Cornwallis (2 vols., 1926)[1]
Other works were:
Family
In 1877 Forrest married Emma Georgina Viner, daughter of Thomas Viner of Crawley, Sussex. They had a son and a daughter.[1]
