Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
E. M. Forster
-
Standard Name: Forster, E. M.
Used Form: Edward Morgan Forster
EMF
was a major novelist of the early twentieth century (despite his slender lifetime output of five novels). He was also a short-story writer, an influential critic of fiction, and the author of travel writing, surviving letters, and an opera libretto. He produced a pioneering text of post-colonialism in his final published novel, A Passage to India. After his death he was accorded the status of an activist for the acceptance of homosexual love between men, on the appearance of his polemical, posthumously-published novel Maurice.
At this hearing (the second part of the prosecution, following a meeting on 25 September), the political content of the novel was the text, and the (homo)sexual content the subtext. Counsel for the defence pointed...
This book won the Atlantic Monthly Prize, of $10,000 US, which the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography translates to £3,500 at the conversion rates of the time, and which was urgently needed for children's school...
Literary responses
Anita Brookner
There was some astonishment in the media when this novel won the Booker Prize (although it was up against J. G. Ballard
's Empire of the Sun. The book itself significantly boosted AB
's literary...
Textual Features
Mary Butts
The novel presents Alexander (later the subject of a fictional trilogy by Mary Renault
) as gradually coming to an acceptance of his own spirituality.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
240
In her preface, MB
acknowledges the influence of E. M. Forster
Intertextuality and Influence
A. S. Byatt
The painter Van Gogh
is a constant presence in this highly allusive novel, which takes Stephanie Potter, now Orton, through pregnancy and birth (while she tries to hold on to her former identity by reading...
AD
's work weaves together a wide range of cultural and literary references: the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgîtâ, as well as such European authors as E. M. Forster
, T. S. Eliot
, Dickinson
Textual Production
Anita Desai
Her other scholarly introductions include one for Rabindranath Tagore
's Selected Short Stories in a new translation in 1991,
and E. M. Forster
's previously unpublished Arctic Summer, 2003.
Textual Features
Daphne Du Maurier
The English title story brings together, beside the sea in Greece, a shy bachelor schoolmaster (English, of course) and an extrovert, boozy American with overtones of the pagan god Pan (which might suggest E. M. Forster
Friends, Associates
Sara Jeannette Duncan
E. M. Forster
wrote in a letter that Mrs Cotes
[Sara Jeanette Duncan] was clever and odd—nice to talk to alone, but at times the Social Manner descended like a pall.
Fowler, Marian. Redney: A Life of Sara Jeannette Duncan. Anansi.
288-9
Friends, Associates
Sara Jeannette Duncan
SJD
also met novelist E. M. Forster
who came to India in 1912 two years after the publication of Howard's End.
Fowler, Marian. Redney: A Life of Sara Jeannette Duncan. Anansi.
286
Textual Production
Sara Jeannette Duncan
According to critic Rosemary Sullivan
, SJDwas an elitist and a monarchist. She had no difficulty with the lot of the Indians and the ethics of imperialism.
Sullivan, Rosemary, and Sara Jeannette Duncan. “Introduction”. The Pool in the Desert, edited by Gillian Siddall and Gillian Siddall, Broadview, pp. 11-22.
After February 1917: Supporters of the Russian Revolution including...
Writing climate item
After February 1917
Supporters of the Russian Revolution including Evelyn Sharp
founded the 1917 Club
to provide a venue for freely discussing the revolution without fear of attracting attention under the Defence of the Realm Act or Dora.
1924: Billy Budd, Foretopman, a novella written...
Writing climate item
1924
Billy Budd, Foretopman, a novella written by Herman Melville
in 1891, was published posthumously in a volume entitled Billy Budd, and Other Prose Pieces.
1928: Edwin Muir published The Structure of the...
21-25 June 1935: The First International Congress of Writers...
National or international item
21-25 June 1935
The First International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture (an anti-fascist event urging the responsibility of writers to their society) was held in Paris.
4 October 1951: E. M. Forster's praise for the accomplishments...
Writing climate item
4 October 1951
E. M. Forster
's praise for the accomplishments of the BBC's Third Programme
was published in The Listener.
Texts
Forster, E. M. A Passage to India. Edward Arnold, 1924.
Forster, E. M. A Room With a View. Edward Arnold, 1908.
Forster, E. M. A Room With A View. Editor Stallybrass, Oliver, Holmes and Meier, 1977.
Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. Edward Arnold, 1927.
Forster, E. M. Howards End. Edward Arnold, 1910.
Forster, E. M. Howards End. Editor Stallybrass, Oliver, The Provost and Scholars of King’s College, 1973.
Forster, E. M. “Introduction and General Notes”. A Room With a View, edited by Oliver Stallybrass, Holmes and Meier, 1977, pp. vii - xix; 221.
Forster, E. M., and Eliza Fay. “Introductory Note”. Original Letters from India, Hogarth Press, 1925, pp. 7-24.
Forster, E. M. Maurice. MacMillan, 1971.
Fay, Eliza, and E. M. Forster. Original Letters from India. Hogarth Press, 1925.