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.
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
Literary responses
Ann Bridge
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...
Literary responses
A. E. Housman
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
Literary responses
Rose Macaulay
Forster
himself clearly did not like her treatment of him. To Leonard Woolf
, the publisher, he said it was not a good book: tactful, gratifying, and in a sense intelligent, but tamely conceived and...
Literary responses
Lucas Malet
The Times review found the subject-matter of these stories derivative: now of Henry James
, now of E. M. Forster
, now of unnamed murder-mystery writers.She likes a revolver shot, not for any mystery...
Literary responses
Naomi Mitchison
NM
was awarded the Palmes de l'Académie Française
for this novel in the year after publication.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
15: 333
Calder, Jenni. The Nine Lives of Naomi Mitchison. Virago.
73
Who’s Who. Adam and Charles Black.
She later wrote that this was my only official recognition from anywhere.
Mitchison, Naomi. You May Well Ask: A Memoir 1920-1940. Gollancz.
65
The novel...
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...
Leisure and Society
Margaret Kennedy
Poet Laureate John Masefield
presided over the event, and gave a speech which MK
admired. E. M. Forster
also attended the dinner.
Powell, Violet. The Constant Novelist. W. Heinemann.
127-8
Leisure and Society
Jennifer Johnston
Although JJ
says she is always reading contemporary young men and women writers coming out of Ireland today,
Moloney, Caitriona et al. Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices From the Field. Syracuse University Press.
67
in her short list of her most beloved books Ireland is just outnumbered by England and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Renault
Homosexuals in British fiction had been portrayed mostly as sick, funny, or both since the Oscar Wilde
trials (1895). E. M. Forster
had kept his Maurice unpublished. Radclyffe Hall
had run into trouble. Virginia Woolf
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Kennedy
Here Kennedy argues that entertainment and enjoyment are valuable aims for the novel. She maintains that the novelist is, in essence, a storyteller, but the storyteller-novelist has been excluded by a literary society that devalues...
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...
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...
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...
