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Alfred Forman

London, 1840 - 1925, London

BiographyOxford Dictionary of National Biography: Forman, Alfred William (1840–1925), translator.

Forman, Alfred William (1840–1925), translator, was born on 13 September 1840 at Camden Place, Southampton Street, Camberwell, the fourth of the eight children of George Ellery Forman (1800–1867), naval surgeon, and his wife, Maria Courthorpe (1805–1888). The family soon moved to Teignmouth in Devon where Alfred went to Thorn Park School (c.1850–1854), and then moved to the Royal Naval School at New Cross, London, in 1854. He left in 1857 and never settled to a career. He started at a colonial broker's office in Mincing Lane, followed that with some ten years as a paper merchant with two different firms, from 1890 to 1891 he was secretary to the New English Art Club, then worked for four years for Robert Cocks & Co., music publishers; he finally ended with a menial job in the General Post Office telephone service. On 30 September 1876 he married Alma (1856–1945), daughter of Leigh Murray, a well-known character actor of the 1840s. Alma Murray gained a reputation for undertaking challenging roles, appearing in the Shelley Society's production of The Cenci in 1886 and creating Raina Petkoff in Shaw's Arms and the Man in 1894. They had one child, Elsa (1878–1966), who never married and was for many years secretary of the Keats–Shelley Association.

Forman heard one of Edward Dannreuther's Wagner concerts in 1873 and concluded that there had ‘been given to the world something so new and so great that it would be at my own spiritual risk if I deferred for a moment longer the attempt to come to an understanding with it’ (Forman, ‘Pioneer’, 463). He privately printed his translation of Die Walküre in 1873 and sent a copy to Wagner, who encouraged him. By 1876 all four parts of his translation of The Ring had been printed and Forman went to Bayreuth to present them to Wagner. This was during the first complete performance, to which Forman contributed the stage animals, ordered from Richard Keene of Wandsworth, a well-known maker of pantomime props. In 1877 Wagner visited England and Forman was lent the manuscript of Parsifal overnight; just before this, he was sent the libretto of a scene from Die Walküre which was later acquired by his brother Henry (Harry) Buxton Forman (1842–1917) (it was lot 890 in the first part of the sale of his library). Alfred Forman's other Wagner translations appeared in 1891 (Tristan), 1899 (Parsifal), and posthumously in 1928 (Tannhäuser). He was Wagner's first translator, but his style was very stilted, and he was superseded by H. and F. Corder, Margaret Glyn, J. P. Jackson, Ernest Newman, and others. In Parsifal, for instance, his knights urge Amfortas to ‘unmuffle the grail’.

Forman, like his brother, was a friend of John Payne, translator and writer of verse, and was for some ten years secretary of the Villon Society. This was initially formed to print Payne's translations of Villon, and in due course all of Payne's work. Forman produced a number of other translations (Dante, Victor Hugo, Grillparzer, Aeschylus), but most remained in manuscript. Like his brother he had poetical leanings and he produced a volume of sonnets in 1886. He was a neat, fastidious man with a short pointed beard in later life. He was never well off, though he received a small pension from 1916 in recognition of his Wagner work, and his family was left in somewhat straitened circumstances. Unlike his brother he remained a churchgoer to the end of his days. He died on 19 December 1925 at 49 Comeragh Road, Baron's Court, London, where he had lived for many years.

J. F. R. Collins
(Collins, J. F. R.. “Forman, Alfred William (1840–1925).” J. F. R. Collins In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Accessed July 14, 2015. www.oxforddnd.com)

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Last Updated8/7/24

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