Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
His first novel: an English widow marries a young Italian in the town of Monteriano
Literature · Novelists
E. M. Forster
1879–1970 · English
Edwardian novel; liberal humanism; associated with the Bloomsbury Group
Edward Morgan Forster was an English novelist and critic whose novels examine class, sexuality and the difficulty of human connection across social and cultural divides. His major works include A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India; Maurice, his novel of homosexual love, was published only after his death. His lectures Aspects of the Novel introduced the lasting distinction between flat and round characters.
How to spot them
- ▸'Only connect...' (epigraph of Howards End); the Schlegel sisters and Leonard Bast
- ▸Lucy Honeychurch, George Emerson and Florence (A Room with a View)
- ▸The Marabar Caves, Dr Aziz and Adela Quested (A Passage to India)
- ▸Flat and round characters (Aspects of the Novel)
- ▸King's College, Cambridge; many novels filmed by Merchant Ivory
Key works
The Longest Journey (1907)
Rickie Elliot's life from Cambridge to an unhappy marriage and schoolmastering
A Room with a View (1908)
Lucy Honeychurch, chaperoned by Charlotte Bartlett in Florence, chooses George Emerson over Cecil Vyse
Howards End (1910)
The cultured Schlegels, the materialist Wilcoxes and the clerk Leonard Bast, linked by a country house
A Passage to India (1924)
An incident in the Marabar Caves leads to the trial of Dr Aziz in British India
Aspects of the Novel (1927)
Cambridge Clark Lectures distinguishing story from plot and flat from round characters
Maurice (1971)
Novel of homosexual love written in 1913–14 and published posthumously
Key ideas
- 'Only connect': the need to join the prose and the passion, the inner and outer life, and people across class
- Story versus plot: 'The king died and then the queen died' is a story; add 'of grief' and it becomes a plot
- In 'What I Believe' he wrote that if forced to choose between betraying his country and betraying his friend, he hoped he would have the guts to betray his country
Quick-fire facts
- •Educated at Tonbridge School and King's College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Apostles
- •A Passage to India won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; it was his last novel published in his lifetime
- •His childhood home, Rooksnest in Hertfordshire, was the model for Howards End
- •Worked for the Red Cross in Alexandria during the First World War and befriended the poet C. P. Cavafy
- •Co-wrote the libretto of Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd (1951) with Eric Crozier
- •Made a Companion of Honour in 1953 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1969
- •Essay collections include Abinger Harvest (1936) and Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
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Sources
- P. N. Furbank — E. M. Forster: A Life
- E. M. Forster — Aspects of the Novel