THIS WAS E. M. FORSTER’S famously simple answer to his own question, “What does a novel do?” Sounds easy enough, but the stories he told in his novels were good enough to keep readers—and filmgoers—enthralled for years. Forster (1879–1970) wrote Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924)—all of which are now popular movies as well as books. In his novels, Forster showed British characters, at home and abroad, learning to let passion into their otherwise practical lives. Make a passage into the world of Forster with this quick quiz.
1. Which two E. M. Forster novels are set in Italy?
2. Which book, Forster’s only novel to deal with homosexuality, was not published until after his death?
3. What opera, based on a story by Herman Melville, features a libretto cowritten by E. M. Forster?
4. Who is the heroine of A Room with a View?
ANSWERS
1. A Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread.
2. Maurice (1971). That Forster was gay was not widely publicized during his lifetime.
3. Billy Budd, Sailor, by Benjamin Britten. Eric Crozier cowrote the libretto with Forster.
4. Lucy Honeychurch.