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 a shy, quiet girl and an overweight, anti-social adolescent, who used reading as an escape and refuge. She also loved...
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...
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...
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...
Fictionalization
Emily Spender
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, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
It was also for sale in the...
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, 1983.
288-9
Friends, Associates
E. Nesbit
EN
met E. M. Forster
after writing, the year after its publication, to congratulate him on A Room with a View.
Briggs, Julia. A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1924. Hutchinson, 1987.
321
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, 1983.
286
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, 1986.
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
Friends, Associates
Edith Sitwell
By 1919 ES
was also friendly with Arnold Bennett
and his wife Marguerite
. Wyndham Lewis
became a great friend, did many drawings of her, and demonstrated a sexual interest in her as well, which...
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, 1996.
271
Timeline
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.
Billy Budd, Foretopman, a novella written by Herman Melville
in 1891, was published posthumously in a volume entitled Billy Budd, and Other Prose Pieces.
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 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.
