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 Nassenheide, her home in Germany, EA
employed the first of a series of Cambridge
tutors for her children, who famously included future writers E. M. Forster
and Hugh Walpole
.
Usborne, Karen. "Elizabeth": The Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden. Bodley Head.
96, 102, 120
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth von Arnim
Of the tutors Charles Erskine Stuart
became her admirer; E. M. Forster
discussed novel-writing with her; and Hugh Walpole
became her life-long friend. She invited Forster to Nassenheide on the recommendation of her nephew Sydney Waterlow
Fictionalization
Elizabeth von Arnim
EA
inspired a number of creative portraits by her contemporaries during the earlier part of her career. Probably the best-known is the character of Mrs Failing in E. M. Forster
's novel The Longest Journey...
Intertextuality and Influence
P. L. Travers
One of these essays (originally a lecture given in 1967 at the American Library of Congress) is entitled Only Connect, an instruction borrowed from E. M. Forster
which summed up PLT
's sense of...
Travel
Elizabeth Taylor
ET
first visited Greece, on a cruise with her husband
and daughter; her fellow travellers included Alfred Noyes
and E. M. Forster
.
Liddell, Robert, and Francis King. Elizabeth and Ivy. Peter Owen.
59-60
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
As a child Betty Coles (later ET
) wrote plays (with very short scenes each demanding a new and elaborate setting) and stories. She said she always wanted to be a novelist.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
2
At twelve...
Publishing
Elizabeth Taylor
ET
began writing stories early. She finished several in late 1941 and early 1942 which satisfied her at the time without shaking her convictioon that she was not yet writing well. None of these survive...
Literary responses
Jan Struther
Most reviewers in England were charmed by the book, but it was hated by E. M. Forster
(who found it both snobbish and underbred), Rosamond Lehmann
, and a voice on the letters page of...
Literary responses
Flora Annie Steel
An early study of FAS
's writings was A Star of India by Daya Patwardhan
, complete with a bibliographical list of her works and investigation of her real-life sources.
Powell, Violet. Flora Annie Steel: Novelist of India. Heinemann.
69
Violet Powell, who admires...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Christina Stead
She was enthusiastic about this extraordinary event, with its delegates from thirty-five countries and audiences of four thousand people. She applauded the Communist
speakers and was contemptuous of the genial, gentle liberals like E. M. Forster
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
ES
was well-known enough in Italy for copies of this book to be supplied to officers' mess-rooms of the Italian Army as a special compliment to the authoress.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
It was also for sale in the...
Textual Production
Emily Spender
E. M. Forster
's Miss Lavish has an unpublished novel destroyed in an accident. It is not known if this was true of ES
as well.
Fictionalization
Emily Spender
E. M. Forster
used ES
as a source for Miss Lavish, a woman writer of romances who appears in A Room With a View, 1908. The basis of his portrait is the impression made...
Textual Production
Zadie Smith
ZS
opened her novel On Beauty: One may as well begin with Jerome's e-mails to his father
Smith, Zadie. On Beauty. A Novel. Hamish Hamilton.
3
—in homage to Forster
, who wrote One may as well begin with Helen's letters to...
