Edward Morgan ForsterOMCH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularlyA Room with a View (1908),Howards End (1910) andA Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as a limited number of biographies and somepageant plays. His short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) is often viewed as the beginning of technologicaldystopian fiction. He also co-authored the operaBilly Budd (1951). Many of his novels examine class differences andhypocrisy. His views as ahumanist are at the heart of his work.
After attendingTonbridge School, Forster studied history andclassics atKing's College, Cambridge, where he met fellow future writers such asLytton Strachey andLeonard Woolf. He then travelled throughout Europe before publishing his first novel,Where Angels Fear to Tread, in 1905. The last of his novels to be published,Maurice, is a tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England. While completed in 1914, the novel was not published until 1971, the year after his death.
Forster, born at 6 Melcombe Place,Dorset Square,London NW1, which no longer stands, was the only child of the Anglo-Irish Alice Clara "Lily" (née Whichelo) and a Welsh architect, Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster. He was registered as Henry Morgan Forster, but accidentally baptised Edward Morgan Forster.[5] His father died oftuberculosis on 30 October 1880, before Forster's second birthday.[6] His father's sisters helped his mother to raise him. The tension between his father's straight-laced, religious family and his doting mother influenced the themes of his work.[7]
Plaque and sundial atRooks Nest in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, the childhood home remembered in Forster's novelHowards End.
In 1883, he and his mother moved toRooks Nest, nearStevenage,Hertfordshire, where they lived until 1893. This was to serve as a model for the house Howards End in his novel of that name. It islistedGrade I on theNational Heritage List for England for historic interest and literary associations.[8] Forster had fond memories of his childhood at Rooks Nest. He continued to visit the house into the later 1940s, and he retained the furniture all his life.[9][10]
A section of the main building, Tonbridge School
Among Forster's ancestors were members of theClapham Sect, a social reform group in theChurch of England. Forster inherited £8,000 (equivalent to £1,123,677 in 2023[11]) intrust from his paternal great-auntMarianne Thornton (daughter of the abolitionistHenry Thornton), who died on 5 November 1887.[12] This was enough to live on and enabled him to become a writer. He attended as a day boyTonbridge School in Kent, where the school theatre has been named in his honour,[13] although he is known to have been unhappy there.[14]
AtKing's College, Cambridge in 1897–1901,[15] he became a member of a discussion society known as theApostles (formally the CambridgeConversazione Society). They met in secret to discuss their work on philosophical and moral questions. Many of its members went on to constitute what came to be known as theBloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a member in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a famous recreation of Forster's Cambridge at the beginning ofThe Longest Journey. The Schlegel sisters ofHowards End are based to some degree onVanessa andVirginia Stephen.[16] Forster graduated with aBA withsecond-class honours in both classics and history.
During his time at Cambridge, Forster resolved to see as much of the world as possible, having grown frustrated with the tight-laced culture of his home country.[3] After university, he travelled Europe with his mother. In 1904, Forster travelled inGreece andItaly out of interest in their classical heritage. He then sought a post inGermany, to learn the language, and spent several months in the summer of 1905 in Nassenheide,Pomerania (now the Polish village ofRzędziny), as a tutor to the children of the writerElizabeth von Arnim. He wrote a short memoir of this experience, which was one of the happiest times in his life.[17][18]
Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s as private secretary toTukojirao III,Maharajah ofDewas.The Hill of Devi is his non-fictional account of this period. Upon his return to England, Forster wroteA Passage to India. All six of his novels were completed inWeybridge, Surrey.
Forster was awarded aBenson Medal in 1937. In the 1930s and 1940s, Forster became a notable broadcaster onBBC Radio, and whileGeorge Orwell was the BBC India Section talks producer from 1941 to 1943, he commissioned from Forster a weekly book review.[21] Forster was President of theNational Council for Civil Liberties, as well as Cambridge Humanists from 1959 to his death. Forster became publicly associated with theBritish Humanist Association. In addition to his broadcasting, he advocated individual liberty and penal reform and opposed censorship by writing articles, sitting on committees and signing letters. He testified as a witness for the defence in the 1960 obscenity trial over the sexually explicit content inD.H. Lawrence's previously unpublishedLady Chatterley's Lover.
Forster lived and died at this house, the home of his friends Robert and May Buckingham. The sign above the garage door marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Forster was elected an honoraryfellow of King's College in January 1946,[22] and lived for the most part in the college, doing relatively little. In April 1947 he arrived in America for a three-month nationwide tour of public readings and sightseeing, returning to the East Coast in June.[23] He declined aknighthood in 1949 and was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1953.[22] At age 82, he wrote his last short story,Little Imber, a science fiction tale. According to his friendRichard Marquand, Forster was critical of American foreign policy in his latter years, which was one reason he refused offers to adapt his novels for the screen, as Forster felt such productions would involve American financing.[24]
The monument to Forster inStevenage, Hertfordshire, near Rooksnest where Forster grew up. He based the setting for his novelHowards End on this area, now informally known as Forster Country.
Forster had five novels published in his lifetime. AlthoughMaurice was published shortly after his death, it had been written nearly sixty years earlier. His first novel,Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), tells of Lilia, a young English widow who falls in love with an Italian, and of the efforts of herbourgeois relatives to get her back from Monteriano (based onSan Gimignano). Philip Herriton's mission to retrieve her from Italy has features in common with that ofLambert Strether inHenry James'sThe Ambassadors. Forster discussed James' novel ironically and somewhat disapprovingly in his bookAspects of the Novel (1927).Where Angels Fear to Tread was adapted as a 1991film directed byCharles Sturridge, starringHelena Bonham Carter,Rupert Graves,Judy Davis andHelen Mirren.[26]
Next, Forster publishedThe Longest Journey (1907), an invertedBildungsroman following the lame Rickie Elliott from Cambridge to a career as a struggling writer and then a post as a schoolmaster, married to an unappealing Agnes Pembroke. In a series of scenes on the Wiltshire hills, which introduce Rickie's wild half-brother Stephen Wonham, Forster attempts a kind ofsublime related to those ofThomas Hardy andD. H. Lawrence.
Forster and his mother stayed at Pensione Simi, which was located in Palazzo Jennings Riccioli,Florence, in 1901. Forster took inspiration from this stay for the Pension Bertolini inA Room with a View.[27]
Forster's third novel,A Room with a View (1908), is his lightest and most optimistic. It was started in 1901, before any of his others, initially under the titleLucy. It explores young Lucy Honeychurch's trip to Italy with a cousin and the choice she must make between the free-thinking George Emerson and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. George's father Mr Emerson quotes thinkers who influenced Forster, includingSamuel Butler. It was adapted as afilm of the same name in 1985 by theMerchant Ivory team, starring Helena Bonham Carter andDaniel Day-Lewis, and as atelevised adaptation of the same name in 2007 byAndrew Davies.[28]
Where Angels Fear to Tread andA Room with a View can be seen as Forster's Italian novels. Both include references to the famousBaedeker guidebooks and concern narrow-minded middle-class English tourists abroad. The books share themes with his short stories collected inThe Celestial Omnibus andThe Eternal Moment.
Howards End (1910) is an ambitious"condition-of-England" novel about various groups among theEdwardian middle classes, represented by the Schlegels (bohemian intellectuals), the Wilcoxes (thoughtless plutocrats) and the Basts (struggling lower-middle-class aspirants).Howards End was adapted as afilm in 1992 by the Merchant-Ivory team, starringVanessa Redgrave,Emma Thompson,Anthony Hopkins, and Helena Bonham-Carter. Thompson won theAcademy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Margaret Schlegel.[29] It was also adapted as aminiseries in 2017. An opera librettoHowards End, America was created in 2016 byClaudia Stevens.[30]
Forster's greatest success,A Passage to India (1924) takes as its subject the relations between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of theBritish Raj. Forster connects personal relations with the politics of colonialism through the story of the Englishwoman Adela Quested, the Indian Dr. Aziz, and the question of what did or did not happen between them in theMarabar Caves. Forster makes special mention of the authorAhmed Ali and hisTwilight in Delhi in a preface to its Everyman's Library Edition. The novel was awarded theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.A Passage to India was adapted as aplay in 1960, directed byFrank Hauser, and as afilm in 1984, directed byDavid Lean, starringAlec Guinness, Judy Davis andPeggy Ashcroft, with the latter winning the 1985 Oscar forBest Supporting Actress.[31]
Maurice (1971), published posthumously, is a homosexual love story that also returns to matters familiar from Forster's first three novels, such as the suburbs of London in the Englishhome counties, the experience of attending Cambridge, and the wild landscape ofWiltshire.[32] The novel was controversial, given that Forster's homosexuality had not been publicly known or widely acknowledged. Today's critics continue to debate over the extent to which Forster's sexuality and personal activities influenced his writing.[33]Maurice was adaptedas a film in 1987 by the Merchant Ivory team. It starredJames Wilby andHugh Grant who played lovers (for which both gained acclaim) and Rupert Graves, withDenholm Elliott,Simon Callow andBen Kingsley in the supporting cast.[34]
Early in his career, Forster attempted a historical novel about the Byzantine scholarGemistus Pletho and the ItaliancondottieroSigismondo de Malatesta, but was dissatisfied with the result and never published it, though he kept the manuscript and later showed it toNaomi Mitchison.[35]
Forster receiving an honorary doctorate fromLeiden University (1954)
Forster's first novel,Where Angels Fear to Tread, was described by reviewers as "astonishing" and "brilliantly original".[36]The Manchester Guardian (forerunner ofThe Guardian) noted "a persistent vein of cynicism which is apt to repel," though "the cynicism is not deep-seated." The novel is labelled "a sordid comedy culminating, unexpectedly and with a real dramatic force, in a grotesque tragedy."[37]Lionel Trilling remarked on this first novel as "a whole and mature work dominated by a fresh and commanding intelligence".[38]
Subsequent books were similarly received on publication.The Manchester Guardian commented onHowards End, describing it as "a novel of high quality written with what appears to be a feminine brilliance of perception... witty and penetrating."[39] An essay byDavid Cecil inPoets and Storytellers (1949) describes Forster as "pulsing with intelligence and sensibility", but primarily concerned with an original moral vision: "He tells a story as well as anyone who ever lived".[40][page needed]
The beginning of technologicaldystopian fiction is traced to Forster's "The Machine Stops", a 1909 short story where most people live underground in isolation.[41][42] M. Keith Booker states that "The Machine Stops,"We andBrave New World are "the great defining texts of the genre of dystopian fiction, both in [the] vividness of their engagement with real-world social and political issues and in the scope of their critique of the societies on which they focus."[43]Will Gompertz for theBBC writes, "The Machine Stops is not simply prescient; it is a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, breath-takingly accurate literary description of lockdown life in 2020."[44]
American interest in Forster was spurred byLionel Trilling'sE. M. Forster: A Study, which called him "the only living novelist who can be read again and again and who, after each reading, gives me what few writers can give us after our first days of novel-reading, the sensation of having learned something." (Trilling 1943)
Criticism of his works has included comments on unlikely pairings of characters who marry or get engaged and the lack of realistic depiction of sexual attraction.[40][page needed]
Forster was President of the Cambridge Humanists from 1959 until his death and a member of the Advisory Council of theBritish Humanist Association from 1963 until his death. His views as ahumanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of personal connections despite the restrictions of contemporary society. His humanist attitude is expressed in the 1938 essayWhat I Believe (reprinted with two other humanist essays – and an introduction and notes byNicolas Walter). When Forster's cousinPhilip Whichelo donated a portrait of Forster to theGay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GLHA),Jim Herrick, the founder, quoted Forster's words: "The humanist has four leading characteristics – curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race."[45]
Portrait of Forster in 1911 byRoger Fry, painted a year after receiving critical acclaim for his fourth novelHowards End. Both members of theBloomsbury Group, Fry was an influence on Forster's aesthetics.[46]
Two of Forster's best-known works,A Passage to India andHowards End, explore the irreconcilability of class differences.A Room with a View also shows how questions of propriety and class can make human connection difficult.A Room with a View is his most widely read and accessible work, remaining popular long after its original publication. His posthumous novelMaurice explores the possibility of class reconciliation as one facet of a homosexual relationship.
Sexuality is another key theme in Forster's works. Some critics have argued that a general shift from heterosexual to homosexual love can be observed throughout the course of his writing career. The foreword toMaurice describes his struggle with his homosexuality, while he explored similar issues in several volumes of short stories. Forster's explicitly homosexual writings, the novelMaurice and the short story collectionThe Life to Come, were published shortly after his death. Beyond his literary explorations of sexuality, Forster also expressed his views publicly; in 1953, Forster openly advocated inThe New Statesman and Nation for a change in the law in regard to homosexuality (which would belegalised in England and Wales in 1967, three years prior to his death), arguing that homosexuality between adults should be treated without bias and on the same grounds as heterosexuality.[47]
Forster is noted for his use ofsymbolism as a technique in his novels, and he has been criticised (as by his friendRoger Fry) for his attachment tomysticism. One example of his symbolism is thewych elm tree inHowards End.[48] The characters of Mrs Wilcox in that novel and Mrs Moore inA Passage to India have a mystical link with the past, and a striking ability to connect with people from beyond their own circles. Forster, Henry James, andW. Somerset Maugham were the earliest writers in English to portray characters from diverse countries – France, Germany, Italy and India. Their work explores cultural conflict, but arguably the motifs of humanism and cosmopolitanism are dominant. In a way, this is anticipation of the concept of human beings shedding national identities and becoming more and more liberal and tolerant.
While not out publicly during his own lifetime, Forster was homosexual. He was friends with fellow gay novelistChristopher Isherwood, whomWilliam Plomer introduced to him in 1932 and to whom he showed an early draft ofMaurice decades before its posthumous publication.[49][3] Forster was open about his homosexuality to close friends, but not to the public. He never married and had a number of male lovers during his adult life.[50] He developed a long-term relationship with Bob Buckingham (1904–1975), a married policeman, which lasted for 40 years.[51][52] Forster included Buckingham and his wife May in his circle, which includedJ. R. Ackerley, a writer and literary editor ofThe Listener, the psychologistW. J. H. Sprott, and for a time, the composerBenjamin Britten. Other writers with whom he associated included the poetSiegfried Sassoon and theBelfast-based novelistForrest Reid. He was a close friend of the socialist poet and philosopherEdward Carpenter. A visit to Carpenter and his younger loverGeorge Merrill in 1913 inspired Forster's novelMaurice, which is partly based on them.[53] He is considered part of theBloomsbury Group.
In 1906 Forster fell in love withSyed Ross Masood, a 17-year-old Indian future Oxford student he tutored in Latin. Masood had a more romantic, poetic view of friendship, confusing Forster with avowals of love.[54]
Though conscious of his repressed desires, it was while stationed in Egypt, that Forster became friendly with the Greek-speaking poetC.P. Cavafy, described in theOxford Dictionary of National Biography article on Forster as "an active homosexual", and "lost his R [respectability]" to a wounded soldier in 1917.[55][56] During his time there, he wrote regularly to Edward Carpenter, whom he told about openly gay life in Alexandria.[57] While in Egypt, Forster had a short-lived but emotionally powerful affair with an Egyptian tram conductor, Mohammad el Adl. The pair met in 1917 and quickly developed an interest in each other. Their relationship began to end in 1918, as el Adl prepared to marry. El Adl and his wife had a son, who they named Morgan. After returning to England in 1919, Forster visited el Adl in 1922 and found him deathly ill with tuberculosis.[58] After el Adl's death, his widow sent his wedding ring to Forster.[4] Forster kept el Adl's letters for the rest of his life.[58]
From 1925 until his mother's death at age 90 in March 1945, Forster lived with her at the house of West Hackhurst in the village ofAbinger Hammer,Surrey; he continued to live there until September 1946.[59] His London base was 26Brunswick Square from 1930 to 1939, after which he rented 9 Arlington Park Mansions inChiswick until at least 1961.[22][60] After a fall in April 1961, he spent his final years in Cambridge at King's College.[61]
In 1930, Forster's relationship with Buckingham began and lasted the rest of his life.[51] Forster was both the witness to Buckingham's marriage to May and the godfather of their son, Robin Morgan. While living at King's College, he spent weekends with the family. In the early years, Forster was jealous of May, but over time they too grew close.[62]
In 1960, Forster began a relationship with the Bulgarian émigréMattei Radev, a picture framer and art collector who moved in Bloomsbury group circles. He was Forster's junior by 46 years. They met at Long Crichel House, a Georgian rectory inLong Crichel, Dorset, a country retreat shared byEdward Sackville-West and the gallery owner and artistEardley Knollys.[63][64]
Forster edited the letters ofEliza Fay (1756–1816) from India, in an edition first published in 1925.[65] In 2012,Tim Leggatt, who had known Forster for his last 15 years, wrote a memoir based on unpublished correspondence with him over those years.[66]
In the final years of his life, having suffered a series of strokes, Buckingham's wife, May, insisted that Forster move into the family home where she could look after him.[51] Forster died of a stroke on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91, at the Buckinghams' home inCoventry,Warwickshire.[67][22] His ashes, mingled with those of Buckingham, were later scattered in the rose garden of Coventry's crematorium, near Warwick University.[68][69]
"Three Courses and a Dessert: Being a New and Gastronomic Version of the Old Game of Consequences", of which Forster wroteThe Second Course (The First Course was written byChristopher Dilke,The Third Course byA. E. Coppard andThe Dessert byJames Laver)
The Forster–Cavafy Letters: Friends at a Slight Angle, edited by Peter Jeffreys (2009). The correspondence between Forster andConstantine P. Cavafy, whom he got to know in Alexandria during his time there in the First World War.
A wide variety of other journals, plays, and draft fiction are archived at King's College.[72]
Notable films and drama based upon Forster's fiction
^abcdDavid Bradshaw, ed. (2007)."Chronology".The Cambridge Companion to E. M. Forster. Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-0-521-83475-9. Retrieved27 May 2008.
^abWendy Moffat,E. M. Forster: A New Life, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.
^BBC (14 July 1970).EM Foster Obituary Special (dvd). Goldcrest Films International.
^"BBC News Website". 2 August 2001.Archived from the original on 14 September 2007. Retrieved21 August 2010.
^"Maurice".MerchantIvory.com. Retrieved30 June 2024.
^Mentioned in a 1925 letter to Mitchison, quoted in her autobiographyYou May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920–1940.Mitchison, Naomi (1986) [1979]."11: Morgan Comes to Tea".You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. London: Fontana Paperbacks.ISBN978-0-00654-193-6.
^P. Gardner, ed. (1973).E. M. Forster: the critical heritage.
J. R. Ackerley,E. M. Forster: A Portrait (London: Ian McKelvie, 1970)
Parminder Kaur Bakshi,Distant Desire. Homoerotic Codes and the Subversion of the English Novel in E. M. Forster's Fiction (New York, 1996)
Nicola Beauman,Morgan (London, 1993)
Lawrence Brander,E. M. Forster. A critical study (London, 1968)
E. K. Brown,Rhythm in the Novel (University of Toronto Press, Canada, 1950)
Glen Cavaliero,A Reading of E.M. Forster (London, 1979)
S. M. Chanda, "A Passage to India: A Close Look" inA Collection of Critical Essays, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers
Stuart Christie,Worlding Forster: The Passage from Pastoral (Routledge, 2005)
John Colmer,E. M. Forster – The personal voice (London, 1975)
Frederick Crews,E. M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism (Textbook Publishers, 2003)
E. M. Forster, ed. by Norman Page, Macmillan Modern Novelists (Houndmills, 1987)
E. M. Forster: The critical heritage, ed. by Philip Gardner (London, 1973)
Forster: A collection of Critical Essays, ed. by Malcolm Bradbury (New Jersey, 1966)
E. M. Forster,What I Believe, and other essays, Freethinker's Classics #3, ed. by Nicolas Walter (London, G. W. Foote & Co. Ltd, 1999 and 2016)
Furbank, P.N.,E.M. Forster: A Life (London, 1977–1978)
Michael Haag,Alexandria: City of Memory (London and New Haven, 2004). This portrait of Alexandria during the first half of the 20th century includes a biographical account of E. M. Forster, his life in the city, his relationship withConstantine Cavafy, and his influence onLawrence Durrell.
Judith Herz and Robert K. Martin,E. M. Forster: Centenary Revaluations (Macmillan Press, 1982)
Frank Kermode,Concerning E. M. Forster (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010)
Francis King,E. M. Forster and his World (London, 1978).
Mary Lago,Calendar of the Letters of E. M. Forster (London: Mansell, 1985)
Mary Lago,Selected Letters of E. M. Forster (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983–1985)
Mary Lago,E. M. Forster: A Literary Life (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995)
Robin Jared Lewis,E. M. Forster's Passages to India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979
John Sayre Martin,E. M. Forster. The endless journey (London, 1976)
Robert K. Martin and George Piggford, eds,Queer Forster (Chicago, 1997)
Pankaj Mishra, ed. "E. M. Forster",India in Mind: An Anthology. New York: Vintage Books, 2005: pp. 61–70
Wendy Moffat,E. M. Forster: A New Life (Bloomsbury, 2010)
Peter Rose, "The Peculiar Charms of E. M. Forster",Australian Book Review (December 2010/January 2011). Forster in his social contextRetrieved 28 November 2013
Nicolas Royle,E. M. Forster (Writers & Their Work (London: Northcote House Publishers, 1999)
P. J. M. Scott,E. M. Forster: Our Permanent Contemporary, Critical Studies Series (London, 1984)
Sofia Sogos, "Nature and Mystery in Edward Morgan Forster's Tales", ed. Giorgia Sogos (Bonn: Free Pen Verlag, 2018)
Oliver Stallybrass, "Editor's Introduction",Howards End (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin English Library, 1983)
Wilfred H. Stone,The Cave and the Mountain: a study of E. M. Forster (1964)
Kathleen Verduin, "Medievalism, Classicism, and the Fiction of E.M. Forster,"Medievalism in the Modern World. Essays in Honour ofLeslie J. Workman, ed. Richard Utz and Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 263–286
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