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.
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
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...
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...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth von Arnim
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...
Textual Production
Sarah Waters
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...
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.
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.
