Forster, E.M. (Edward Morgan), 1879-1970

Novelist.

Epithet: novelist

Epithet: Creator of Mss Eur D964

English novelist.

Arnold Bennett was a British novelist, dramatist, short-story writer, literary critic, journalist, and editor.

E. M. Forster was a British novelist, essayist, and critic.

British novelist and essayist.

English author.

20th century English author and Bloomsbury Group member.

E.M. Forster was a British novelist who wrote Howard's end and A room with a view, among others. During World War I he served with the Red Cross in Alexandria, Egypt.

E.M. Forster, British novelist and essayist, was born in London and educated at Tonbridge School and King's College, Cambridge. He was elected to the "Apostles" in 1901 and met members of The Bloomsbury Group - of whom Vita Sackville-West was a member. Forster published his first novel , Where angels fear to tread, in 1905. He is best known for Howard's end (1910) and A passage to India (1924).

Edward Morgan Forster was born January 1, 1879, in London. His father, also Edward Morgan, was an architect and died of consumption 18 months after the birth of his son, leaving him in the care of his mother, Alice Clara Whichelo and a variety of female relatives. Forster's mother moved with her young son to rural Hertfordshire in 1883 where he lived for most of his childhood before being sent to Kent House preparatory school in Eastbourne. In 1887 a great-aunt left a legacy to Forster which, when combined with his father's estate, paid for Forster's education and later allowed him the leisure to be a writer without needing to worry about income. Forster finished his school days at Tonbridge School, which he attended as a day student rather than as a boarder between 1893-1897.

In the autumn of 1897, Forster entered King's College, Cambridge, where he found liberation from the conformist attitudes of preparatory school. He was elected to the Apostles in 1901, along with Desmond MacCarthy, and became acquainted with the well-known alumni of that society, G.E. Moore, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Leonard Woolf, and Roger Fry, among others, who later introduced him into the Bloomsbury group. It was at Cambridge that Forster began to think of himself as a writer and the years immediately following his graduation were his most productive as a novelist. Between 1903 and 1910 he produced Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howards End (1910), all four of which are now regarded as classics.

After 1910 Forster wrote mostly short stories and essays. He also traveled, taking a long trip to India in 1912 and spending a greater part of World War I in Egypt working with the Red Cross. A travel guide to Alexandria and a collection of essays resulted from his time in Egypt and after his second trip to India in 1921 he completed A Passage to India (1924). Forster's final novel, Maurice (1971) was actually written in 1914 and then frequently revised after 1924, but was not published until after his death. This novel deals with the topic of homosexuality and is thought to be at least partly autobiographical.

After World War I Forster wrote an increasing number of essays on the human condition and more specifically on the state of life in England and the value of democracy, which the onset of the Depression, Nazism, and the impending crisis of World War II seemed to be threatening. His essays brought him a great deal of public notice and in 1934 he was elected president of the National Council for Civil Liberties. He is given credit for playing a large role in having the provisions of the Sedition Bill modified. When World War II broke out, Forster returned to his mother's home in West Hackhurst.

After the war, Forster accepted a fellowship at Cambridge where he maintained a residence for the rest of his life. He began to gain international acclaim after 1945 and wrote copiously through the early 1960s. He suffered a stroke in 1964 and another one the following year which caused his overall health to decline. He suffered a major stroke in May of 1970 and on June 7 he died at the home of friends.

E. M. Forster was an English novelist. His many works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room With A View (1908), A Passage to India (1924), and Maurice (1971). Forster also authored criticism works, essay collections, and wrote the libretto for Britten's opera Billy Budd (1951).

Siegfried Sassoon was an English writer. He served in World War I, and later befriended Wilfred Owen and published his works. Sassoon's own writings often followed anti-war and devotional themes.

E.M. Forster was born in 1879. His father, E.M.L. Forster, was an architect living in London, but died in the year following his son's birth. The boy was thus raised by his mother, Alice Clara Forster, and a number of female relatives, spending his early years at Rooksnest, a country house near Stevenage in Hertfordshire. It was a house for which E.M. Forster held great affection throughout his life, and became the model for the home in his novel 'Howards End'.

After a number of unhappy years in public schools, Forster came up to King's in 1897 to read classics. During his freshman year, he joined the society known as the Apostles, which he remained a member of throughout his undergraduate career, and received a B.A. in 1900. His tutor, Nathaniel Wedd, was of some influence on the young Forster, encouraging him to become a writer and more generally being responsible, according to Forster, for 'such awakening as has befallen me'. Forster stayed on for a fourth year to read history, being tutored in this capacity by Oscar Browning, and at the same time came under the influence of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, who became a lifelong friend.

A legacy from his great-aunt, Marianne Thornton, relieved any immediate pressure to earn a living, and E.M. Forster spent the years after his degree alternately traveling, working and writing. Between 1901 and 1927 he visited Italy, Austria and India, and from his experiences both at home and abroad he published the five major novels for which he is still best known: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India .

When E.M. Forster was in England, he lived with his mother at Abinger Hammer in Surrey and continued to do so until she died in 1944. King's offered him an Honorary Fellowship from that time forward, and he split his time thereafter between a flat in London and rooms in Cambridge. From 1953 he resided at King's College where he either taught little or not at all, held no college office, nor sat on any committee, but nevertheless came to know and influence a large number of undergraduates, acting as the sort of 'bachelor don' that had disappeared since his own days as an undergraduate.

E.M. Forster died in 1970 at the age of 90.