E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on New Year’s Day, 1879. Before he reached his second year, he lost his father, an architect, to tuberculosis. After his father’s death Edward was raised by his mother and aunts, who doted on him and dressed him as Little Lord Fauntleroy for photographs and drawings. While the inner sanctums of female life may have been somewhat oppressive to the young boy, the settings were also inspirational. Forster’s early stories of wardrobes and earrings were set in the domestic world that would inspire some of his greatest novels.

Although he was beloved at home, Edward’s sensitivity and slight physique made him the target of school bullies until he entered King’s College, Cambridge, in 1897. College was a revelation to the young intellectual, who flourished under the cultivation of his dons and his peers and was inducted into the Apostles, one of the university’s most exclusive societies. There, amid conversations with some of England’s greatest contemporary thinkers, Forster became known for his subtle wit and quietly brilliant observations. Not so subtle, however, was the force of his creative spirit, which began to flower during this period. Awakened to his homosexuality, the young writer penned a series of adventurous erotic stories and began experimenting with the novelistic form.

The years after his graduation were marked by uncertainty: How to live and what to do were Forster’s pressing concerns, and he pursued his writing with great intensity. Four novels—Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, and Howards End—appeared between 1905 and 1910, sealing Forster’s fame as an emerging writer of tremendous talent. Teaching Latin, lecturing, and holding court with the Bloomsbury group during this period left time for little else. Nevertheless, Forster fell madly in love with an Indian student named Syed Ross Masood. The love was unrequited, but the experience compelled Forster to travel to India, the first of two voyages that more than a decade later would inspire his last novel, considered by many to be his greatest.

As World War I loomed over Europe, Forster again left England, this time to work for the Red Cross in Alexandria, Egypt. Despite a passionate affair with a young Egyptian man, the years-long exposure to human suffering left Forster rather jaded and drained. Another journey to India proved inspirational, however, and in 1924 the author’s masterpiece, A Passage to India, was published; though it was his last novel, it was hardly his final piece of writing. In his remaining years Forster authored more than four hundred works that included essays, articles, introductions, lectures, reviews, and biographies. He also deepened his commitment to literary freedom and fought censorship in all its forms.

E. M. Forster died in Coventry, England, at age ninety-one on June 7, 1970.