Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Forster, George
FORSTER, GEORGE (d. 1792), traveller, a civil servant of the East India Company on the Madras establishment, undertook and safely accomplished in 1782 the then remarkable feat of travelling from Calcutta overland into Russia. His journey took him through Cashmere, Afghanistan, Herat, Khorassan, and Mazanderan to the Caspian Sea, which he crossed. While in England he prepared for the press ‘Sketches of the Mythology and Customs of the Hindoos’ (8vo, 84 pp., 1785), and on his return to India he wrote an account of his journey, the first volume of which was published at Calcutta in 1790. In 1792 he was sent on an embassy to the Mahrattas, and died at Nagpore. The narrative of his journey was completed from his papers, and published in London by an unknown editor as ‘A Journey from Bengal to England through the Northern part of India, Kashmire, Afghanistan, and Persia, and into Russia by the Caspian Sea’ (2 vols. 4to, 1798). He is often confused with Johann Georg Adam Forster [q. v.], as, for example, in ‘Monthly Review,’ December 1798 (xxvii. 361n.), where, in a review of the journey, he is described as the son of Johann Reinhold Forster.
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