Forrest Reid (1875-1947) was a Northern Irish novelist, literary critic, and translator, renowned for his significant contributions to literature. He resided at 20 Mount Charles in Belfast and was the youngest son in a Protestant family of twelve, six of whom survived.
Reid’s father, Robert Reid (1825–1881), managed a felt works after an unsuccessful stint as a shipowner and hailed from a well-established upper-middle-class Ulster family. His mother, Frances Matilda, was Robert’s second wife and the daughter of Captain Robert Parr of the 54th Regiment of Foot, belonging to the landed gentry Parr family of Shropshire, related to Catherine Parr, the last wife of King Henry VIII.
Forrest Reid is celebrated for his translations of poems from the Greek Anthology, his study of W. B. Yeats’s work, and his book on English woodcut artists of the 1860s. He was also a close friend of Arthur Greeves, the artist best known as C. S. Lewis’s best friend. Greeves painted several portraits of Reid, which are now housed at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.
If you fancy learning more about the Queen’s Quarter, come on my tour of the area! Details are here.