E M Forster

E M Forster by Dora Carrington, 1924-25

Edward Morgan Forster (1879–1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect."

Forster lived at Rooks Nest, Stevenage from 1883 to 1893, and there is a monument to him in Stevenage.

Forster's main novels published in his lifetime were: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924).

Forster was gay but closeted, and a lifelong bachelor.

His gay-themed novel Maurice was written in 1913–14, but published posthumously in 1971.

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1879 births