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.
Merchant-Ivory Productions
' A Room with a View, filmed from the novel by E. M. Forster
, was released with RPJ
's screenplay; its mass exposure helped to produce a peak moment in her fame.
Long, Robert Emmet. The Films of Merchant Ivory. Harry N. Abrams.
199-200
Sucher, Laurie. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: The Politics of Passion. Macmillan.
240, 200
Reception
Elizabeth Jenkins
The book received some appreciative reviews, but there were others which argued that EJ
was culpable in her use of real events which were so traceable. The Time and Tide notice (by a reviewer whom...
SJ
's work on behalf of the imprisoned and the exiled required her to spend an immense amount of time and energy in diverse literary, social, and political circles. Joanna Labon
asserts that [u]nder Jameson's...
Textual Production
Storm Jameson
Jameson had been approached by the Ministry of Information
once the USA had entered World War II, for suggestions on how to cement Anglo-American relations.
Jameson, Storm. Journey from the North. Harper and Row.
The volume was not an instant success, though it was later admired by authors such as E. M. Forster
and W. H. Auden
.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press.
345-6
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Agnes Hamilton
Her title makes multiple allusion to disparate other texts. Its first four words are quoted from a poem of aspiration by Christina Rossetti
; the rest of it alludes to E. M. Forster
's semi-disillusioned...
Literary responses
Radclyffe Hall
A number of writers rallied in support of RH
. E. M. Forster
and Leonard Woolf
drafted a letter protesting the suppression of The Well of Loneliness. Its signatories included Bernard Shaw
, T. S. Eliot
Publishing
Eliza Fay
EF
's Original Letters from India was re-published by the Hogarth Press
, with introductory and terminal notes by E. M. Forster
.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Mary E. Gaither. A Checklist of the Hogarth Press, 1917-1946. Woolmer/Brotherson.
32
Literary responses
Ketaki Kushari Dyson
KKD
garnered enthusiastic reviews on at least three continents. The Times Literary Supplement commended her ability to get close to her subjects: Only Connect, urged E. M. Forster
: Ketaki Dyson does connect.
Dyson, Ketaki Kushari. A Various Universe. Oxford University Press, p. xxi; 406 pp.
back cover
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.
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
Intertextuality and Influence
Anita Desai
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
