E.M. Forster

1879-1970. Novelist, essayist and radioist. Wrote Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924).

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on 1 January 1879. His father died early so he was brought up by a single mother. He had no siblings and he was surrounded by mostly female relatives. He inherited a large amount of money from his great-aunt Marianne Thornton, which made it possible for him to attend a good school and get a proper education. Forster attended King’s College in Cambridge. He was member of an upper-class society, towards which he was not uncritical, though.

Forster was not only a novelist, but also an essayist, journalist and scholar. As a novelist, he produced five novels, a sixth, called Maurice was published posthumously. Forster had already started working on Maurice as early as 1913, but in this period it had not been publishable due to the fact that it dealt with homosexuality. Forster’s biggest success is regarded to be Howards End, which was published in 1910.

Unfortunately, after this achievement Forster had a hard time writing more pieces of fiction and devoted himself to commentaries on social problems, political issues, books, art and war instead. Furthermore, during his lifetime Forster can be regarded as being politically active. He, for example, opposed and fought censorship, which was imposed on speakers on the BBC. He also protested against the Nazi regime. All in all, it can be said that Forster put himself out for humanistic and moral values.

E.M. Forster lived a long life and died in 1970 at the age of ninety-one.

Bibliography:

McDowell, Frederick P.W.. E.M. Forster. Revised Edition. Twayne's English Authors Series. Ed. Kinley E.Roby. Boston: Twayne, 1982.

Page, Norman. E.M.Forster. Macmillan Modern Novelists. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987.