John Anster

Who was John Anster?

John Martin Anster was born in Charleville, Co. Cork, and educated at Trinity College Dublin from 1814. He converted from Catholicism to the Church of Ireland and was admitted to the bar in 1824. He contributed prose essays in the North British Review and 28 poems to the Amulet in 1826. Eventually he became Regius Professor of Civil Law at TCD, having held office as registrar of the Admiralty Court, from 1837.

In Blackwood's Magazine for June, 1820, Anster published fragments of a translation of Goethe's Faust, and reprinted in England and America. He published the first part in 1835 as Faust: A Dramatic Mystery. The second part appeared in 1864.

He was a contributor to the Dublin University Magazine between the years 1837-56.