E. M. Forster Books

The unorthodox narrative, the unfinished novel buried within books must be deciphered as a palimpsest by an archeologist-reader. Not only does it explore the classical themes of Forsteriana, but it goes beyond the boundaries of traditional patterns of writing and reading, fanning out a new range of perspectives and interpretations. Arctic Summer is a World of Art everlastingly shaping and altering what exists.

why didn't someone think of this sooner? lavin applies forster's literary theories to his own work. she and he come out ahead. as back cover blurb says, she "adds a much needed dimension." and the discussion in this book is "ambitious and stimulating." this book belongs in all major libraries, but also can be used effectively by any reader with an interest in emf.

Forster is civilized in a way few people are or ever have been; it's a rare treat to peek into his personal scrapbook to read his favourite quotations and thoughts upon them.

You'll wait a long time to find another book stuffed with this kind of sheer intellectual value. Again, a rare treat.

E.M. Forster appeals to many because of his early novels, "Where Angels Fear to Tread", "A Room with a View", and "Howard's End", the last which is included in this book. They seem like updated Austen novels, neat and well-structured, albeit more surprising, but still in all appearances novels dealing with social manners. However, "Howard's End" and "A Passage to India" deal with much more substantial themes of industrialization and imperialism as well as Forster's overarching idea of connection between peoples and ideologies.

"Howard's End" sets up the opposition between the cultured Schlegels and the industrious Wilcoxes. Simplistically, each family represents the division within society at the time, whether to embrace the outward form of change in motor cars and encroaching tenements or to hold onto the land and the responsibility and feelings contained within it. Forster also makes use of associations and symbols to further the reader's understanding of a greater meaning, such as the teutonic assocation with the Schlegels or the description of Mrs. Bast's photograph to suggest her occupation. Still, the theme of connection found in its famous epigraph "Only connect... (the prose to the passion)" is woven well throughout and sometimes surprisingly so.

"A Passage..." is Forster's greatest work, and rightfully so because in it he is most ambitious, adding elements of imperialism and religion to that of relationships between people. While the novel is not a political novel per se, it justifies the interpretation through its mostly sympathetic treatment of the Indians and the absurdity of British bureacracy in a culture beyond its understanding. I assert that this is one of Forster's more pessimistic novels with an appropriate ending, but my colleagues assert the opposite, that it makes claims to the hope of connection. I leave it to you to conclude for yourself. Forster also gives a good foretaste of the post-modernist technique, with his attempt to show that the "many-headed monster" of India or any culture cannot be adequately treated by a single perspective.

This book contains six of E. M. Forster's short stories. Nearly all of the stories are religious fantasy or science fiction. Some are apocalyptic, some are comical, some are frightening and others are baffling. But there is something in each of these stories to which the soul responds.

Forster's vision of heaven in "Mr. Andrews" is truly sublime and ranks with C. S. Lewis's "Great Divorce" in how well it holds together and appeals to the reader's spirit, imagination and reason. It is the finest, most touching short story concerning faith and God that I've come across. Every time I read this particular story, it carries new meaning. Forster's vision of hell and redemption in "The Point of It" is also worth reading.

In the title story, a middle-aged woman struggles to come to terms with how a single moment in her youth has shaped her life and affected an entire community. There is much irony and an entire spectrum of emotions to be plumbed in this story.

Forster wrote a second collection of religious-themed short fiction entitled, "The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories". I highly recommend both books.

In this 1910 story of Edwardian England, Forster illustrates the conflicts between the superior attitudes of the aristocracy and a developing feeling of obligation toward the "lower" classes which World War I will soon bring into sharp relief. Margaret and Helen Schlegel are intellectual and sensitive to the arts, with compassionate hearts for those less fortunate. When Margaret, at age twenty-nine, is affianced to Henry Wilcox, the much older, widowed husband of a friend, this conflict of attitudes is brought to the fore. Henry, insensitive and believing himself actually entitled to his family's privileges, is cold and reserved, though Margaret believes that "Henry must be forgiven and made better by love."

Helen, her sister, a 21-year-old with an enthusiasm for the life of the imagination, has no sympathy for Henry's staid pronouncements and failure to pay attention to the people "below him" who are dependent upon his whims. When Henry asserts that Porphyria Fire Insurance Co. is on the verge of collapse, Helen and Margaret persuade Leonard Bast, a young clerk they have befriended, to resign his position there, only to have him later "downsized" out of his subsequent bank job. Henry refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever and refuses his wife's entreaties to give the destitute Leonard a job.

Immensely sympathetic to the economic position of the poor and women, Forster illustrates their financial dependence on those over whom they have little control. Margaret, who secures the reader's total sympathy, must try to educate a close-minded dolt like Henry to be kinder and more empathetic towards the people he considers below him, but she achieves only limited success. When Helen returns from Germany, where she has been living, and Henry and his family discover she is pregnant, Henry's belief that her condition reflects negatively upon himself and his family inspires a disaster with far-reaching consequences.

Filled with incisive observations and great wit, the novel follows the narrative pattern of a melodrama, but Forster's sensitivity to both sides--the practical and conservative values of Henry vs. the emotional and idealistic sides of Margaret and Helen--elevates the novel above the tawdry. Henry is a product of his time and his class, but though times are changing, he is too dense to realize it. With the action centered around the Wilcox home at Howard's End, the reader realizes that the estate is a microcosm of the country and that its conflicts are those of the nation. Thoughtful and entertaining, Howard's End still draws in readers after almost a hundred years. Mary Whipple

Born in 1879 England, E.M. Forster attended King's College at Cambridge; thereafter his family fortune enabled him to live as please. He traveled extensively; dabbled in the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, which included the celebrated Virginia Woolf; and strove to conceal his homosexuality from the general public until his death in 1970. Although he was widely read during his lifetime, a series of films based on his novels prompted a major re-evaluation of his work during the 1980s and 1990s, and he is now considered among the finest English prose stylists of the early 20th Century.

Written in 1910, HOWARDS END is the fifth of six novels Forster wrote, and like most of his work it focuses on issues of social class. In this instance, the action of the novel centers on the house Howards End and the three families who swirl through it. The house itself is owned by Ruth Wilcox, the wife and mother of a highly conventional, conservative family. Upon her death, she wills the house not to her family, which she feels will not appreciate it, but to friend Margaret Schlegel. Ruth's husband destroys her will and conceals the legacy from Margaret--but in an ironic turn of events falls in love with and marries her.

The story itself revolves around Margaret Schlegel and her sister Helen. Half-German, well educated, and more independent in thought and manner than most Englishwomen of their era, the sisters also become friendly with bank clerk Leonard Bast. In their efforts to assist him, however, they become leading figures in a scandal that threatens the Wilcox family as a whole. Throughout the novel ownership of the house, and the lies and hypocrisy used to retain it, becomes a symbol of class struggle as those who have power and status (the Wilcoxes) seek to retain it and those who do not (the Basts) seek to obtain it.

Forster is indeed a great stylist, and although the novel is indeed famous for its themes and symbolism he never places them above story or characterization. He possesses both the gift of straight-forward narrative and delicate touch, and the result is a perfect balance, a pure pleasure to read from start to finish. Although HOWARDS END is not as widely read as A PASSAGE TO INDIA, it certainly deserves to be. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Still laughing at the negative voter

...and well, a case could be made that the British write better than anyone else in the English language as I suppose the language was theirs first. I almost cannot express how wonderful this book is. So good in fact, that one should not waste time reading any other books by Forster if this is the first you have read, for one will surely be disappointed. The language, the characters, the plot. If you have seen the marvelous movie from some fifteen or so years ago with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson you should still read the book. The movie does do a better job with the Leonard Bast character, but to get the real full Forster experience of the Schlegels and Wilcoxes please do read the original. I could not recommend this more, it is one of the best in our language.

In this 1910 story of Edwardian England, Forster illustrates the conflicts between the superior attitudes of the aristocracy and a developing feeling of obligation toward the "lower" classes which World War I will soon bring into sharp relief. Margaret and Helen Schlegel are intellectual and sensitive to the arts, with compassionate hearts for those less fortunate.

When Margaret, at age twenty-nine, is affianced to a much older widower, Henry Wilcox, this conflict of attitudes is brought to the fore. Henry, insensitive and believing himself actually entitled to his family's privileges, is cold and reserved, though Margaret believes that "Henry must be forgiven and made better by love."

Helen, her sister, a 21-year-old with an enthusiasm for the life of the imagination, has no sympathy for Henry's staid pronouncements and failure to pay attention to the people "below him" who are dependent upon his whims. When a young clerk finds himself out of his bank job as a result of something Henry has said, Henry refuses his wife's entreaties to give the destitute Leonard a job.

Immensely sympathetic to the economic position of the poor and women, Forster illustrates their financial dependence on others. Margaret, who secures the reader's total sympathy, must try to educate a close-minded dolt like Henry, but she achieves only limited success. Later, his belief that Helen reflects negatively upon himself and his family inspires a disaster with far-reaching consequences.

Filled with incisive observations and great wit, the novel follows the narrative pattern of a melodrama, but Forster's sensitivity to both sides--the practical and conservative values of Henry vs. the emotional and idealistic sides of Margaret and Helen--elevates the novel above the tawdry. With the action centered around the Wilcox home at Howard's End, the reader realizes that the estate is a microcosm for the conflicts of the nation.

This edition, thoroughly annotated, is the definitive critical edition containing resource material and an explication of references. Comprehensive background material for the period, critical analysis of Forster's themes, and careful notes throughout this novel provide a wealth of research materials for the literary critic and historian. Mary Whipple

Forster's The Longest Journey is painfully bad: painfully awkward, painfully closeted, painfully dated, painfully class-conscious, painfully defiant of the norms of story-telling, painfully sententious at times and preachy. It's also painfully true.

It's a "college" novel, like many others depicting the lives of its characters fatally determined by the inherently contingent friendships one forms in the nursery of one's college circle. I read it first in 1962, when I was living in painful intimacy with my "peers" in a painfully cloistered House at a painfully famous university. I suppose I had to write a painfully trivial paper about it. Now I've read it again, and I find that, seen backwards through the telescope of years, it's uproariously funny. I don't remember having that impression the first time. I imagine I found it more serious when I was living in it.

I wonder why novels of the early 20th C seem so much more dated and mawkish at times than, for instance, Trollope or Fielding or Smollett? Perhaps it's the embarrassment that teenagers feel about their parents when those parents claim to have been young once and reveal the turmoils that only the current generation can take seriously. Anyway, I suspect that many readers will underrate this novel because of that uneasiness. All I can say is, if you're not reading it for homework, nobody will make you enjoy it. But if you give it a chance, you may find that it's painfully moving and beautiful.