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.
VW
heard E. M. Forster
's talk on The Feminine Note in Literature at the Friday Club
. His novel Howards End had appeared the previous October.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
271
politics
Virginia Woolf
The New Censorship, a letter to the editor protesting against the suppression of Radclyffe Hall'sThe Well of Loneliness and signed by VW
and E. M. Forster
, appeared in the Nation.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
115
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
VW
refused E. M. Forster
's request for permission to nominate her to the Committee of the London Library
, because of the library's policy against women members (a policy instituted by her father, Leslie Stephen
).
Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. Hogarth Press.
2: 224
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
216
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
663
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Early members of what VW
called Old Bloomsbury (to distinguish the original members of the group from later additions) included Virginia and Vanessa Stephen
, Leonard Woolf
, Clive Bell
, E. M. Forster
,...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
The cultural production of members of Bloomsbury was prodigious, embracing the imaginative, critical, and political writing of Virginia and Leonard Woolf
, E. M. Forster
, and Lytton Strachey
, the economic theories of Maynard Keynes
Family and Intimate relationships
Virginia Woolf
Leonard Woolf was a close Cambridge
friend of Virginia's brother Thoby Stephen
and a member of the Apostles
. A Jew, with family roots in London and Amsterdam, he grew up in London, first...
politics
Virginia Woolf
Each meeting consisted of dinner, followed by an address from a speaker, followed by discussion. Speakers included E. M. Forster
, Virginia's brother Adrian
, and Ray Strachey
. About a dozen working-class women attended...
Occupation
Virginia Woolf
The Press, which began as therapy and for the purpose of publishing the works of its owners, grew into a major engine of modern culture and thought.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
371-3
Its political interests were served by enlightened...
Reception
Virginia Woolf
Quentin Bell reports that [a]s always, [Woolf] found publication an agitating business, and that when she received her own six copies, on 20 October, she immediately dispatched one to each of Vanessa
, Clive Bell
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Virginia Woolf
Character in Fiction, the further essay which emerged from Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, is reflective, philosophical, fictional, its tone assertive, witty, ironical, and serious. It ranges
Woolf, Virginia. The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Editors McNeillie, Andrew and Stuart Nelson Clarke, Hogarth Press.
3: 421
living writers into two...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
The first reviews of Mrs. Dalloway came out in the same month as those of The Common Reader (first series). Both the Western Mail and the Scotsman dismissed the novel as beyond the general reader...
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
found the Times Literary Supplement notice depressingly similar to the same journal's views of Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway: that is, in her summary, gentlemanly, kindly, timid & praising beauty, doubting character.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 134
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
Ethel Smyth
sent her responses to this book by telegram on publication day: Book astounding so far. Agitatingly increases value of life. Two days later she sent: Final paragraph almost smashes machine of life with...
Friends, Associates
Amabel Williams-Ellis
AWE
's friends and associates included Edith Sitwell
, whose poems she often published in The Spectator; Storm Jameson
, a political mentor
Williams-Ellis, Amabel. All Stracheys Are Cousins. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
She carried out as much research as available sources permitted into lesbian lives in England of the 1940s, and spent four years working on this novel (as compared with one year for her first). She...
Timeline
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.
