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.
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...
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
Virginia Woolf
The first reviews of Mrs. Dalloway came out in the same month as those of The Common Reader (first series). Both the Western Mail and the Scotsman dismissed the novel as beyond the general reader...
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
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
VW
found the Times Literary Supplement notice depressingly similar to the same journal's views of Jacob's Room and Mrs. Dalloway: that is, in her summary, gentlemanly, kindly, timid & praising beauty, doubting character.
Woolf, Virginia. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Editors Bell, Anne Olivier and Andrew McNeillie, Hogarth Press.
3: 134
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
Ethel Smyth
sent her responses to this book by telegram on publication day: Book astounding so far. Agitatingly increases value of life. Two days later she sent: Final paragraph almost smashes machine of life with...
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...
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
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
A. S. Byatt
The painter Van Gogh
is a constant presence in this highly allusive novel, which takes Stephanie Potter, now Orton, through pregnancy and birth (while she tries to hold on to her former identity by reading...
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
Intertextuality and Influence
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Heat and Dust presents a double plot: one set in the present, told in first-person narrative and in journals, and one set in 1923 (the April of which year saw an outbreak of Muslim-Hindu violence...
