He is credited with printing the first image in British colonial America, from a woodcut[a] he carved of the Puritan minister Richard Mather.

Foster graduated from Harvard University, but was a self-taught pioneer in American printmaking in woodcut, and also learned the art of typography from the Boston printer Marmaduke Johnson.

Foster attended Harvard College and graduated in the class of 1667 with a bachelor's degree,[8] some two years after he began teaching English, Latin, and writing in his hometown.

[12] Investigations by Samuel Green, once the official printer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reveals that Foster had possessed a natural talent for drawing and sketching, and early in life was drawn to the art of wood-engraving.

The crudeness of his work indicates that he was probably self-taught, although he may have been influenced by John Hull, the mint-master, and Edward Budd, a prominent carver who was in Boston as early as 1665.

According to Foster's biographer, Samuel Abbott Green, it is difficult to write an extensive biography of his personal and professional life.

"[35] An example of Foster's Massachusetts colonial seal also appears in Increase Mather's work, A brief history of the war with the Indians in New-England, published in 1676.

[36] Aside from works by John Eliot, Foster also published A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England in 1677, by William Hubbard, Minister of Ipswich.

[38][29][f] Foster's map has puzzled and fascinated historians since the mid-nineteenth century because two versions exist, the other being produced in London, England.

David Woodward, a specialist in cartography maintains that the Wine Hills block was made in England, by another engraver using Foster's original proof for the model, and that the difference in the spellings were the result of this printmaker's inability to decipher some of the letters, as he would have glued Foster's original face down on the block to create the copy.

[44][g] Historian Matt B. Jones of the American Antiquarian Society explains that "enough has been said to make it clear that Green and Foster were not friendly rivals", which involved the competition between the two printers for printing commissions that often came from the Commissioners of the United Colonies who financed the Cambridge press, the Puritan Reverends Increase Mather and John Eliot, and others who ultimately gave Foster much of their work.

[47] Foster's printing career lasted from 1675 until just before his early death in 1681, which is largely why his extant works are very rare, consisting of some fifty editions.

Samuel Sewall, though not a printer but a magistrate, a well respected man of Boston was recommended by the General Court to manage and continue printing operations where Foster left off.

[10] In Foster's will, he left the greater portion of his estate to his mother and his siblings, but set aside 20 shillings each (£1) for his good friends, the ministers John Eliot and Increase and Cotton Mather.