E. M. Forster
Personal Information
Description
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH, 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 and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality 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".
Books
A Room with a View
Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her, until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George. Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?
Howards End
Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece
Alexandria
One thousand years from now, a small religious community lives in what were once the fens of eastern England. They are perhaps the world’s last human survivors. Now they find themselves stalked by a force that draws ever closer, and that seems to have brought them to the brink of extinction. A force that offers them a promise and a threat: a place called Alexandria. Set in a time on the far side of an apocalypse, and perhaps on the verge of another, Alexandria is the final novel in my Buckmaster trilogy, which maps two thousand years of human history. Graywolf Press (US), 2020. Faber & Faber (UK), 2021
Essays of the masters
Selected Stories
Letters between Forster and Isherwood on homosexuality and literature
"The correspondence between E.M. Forster and Christopher Isherwood is a fascinating record of the professional and personal lives of two major British writers from the 1930s to the 1960s. The letters of the 1930s reveal how Forster and Isherwood each came to grips with the rise of fascism in Europe and threat of war as both writers and simply human beings caught in the midst of a world on the brink of disaster. These letters also tell two parallel but very different stories of love and devotion between each writer and his respective male partner. The correspondence during the war years juxtapose the strikingly different worlds in which Forster and Isherwood were living: the London area during the Blitz and the southern California community of exiled writers, respectively. In the post-war letters the two friends continue their ongoing conversation to find a suitable ending for Forster's groundbreaking but yet unpublished novel, Maurice. This complete collection of very readable letters, thoroughly annotated and with an informative introduction, will be of great interest for literary scholars and general readers."--Jacket.
Science Fiction Hall of Fame--Volume Two B
The Martian Way - novelette by Isaac Asimov Earthman, Come Home - novelette by James Blish Rogue Moon - novella by Algis Budrys The Spectre General - novella by Theodore R. Cogswell (variant of The Specter General) [as by Theodore Cogswell] The Machine Stops - novelette by E. M. Forster The Midas Plague - novella by Frederik Pohl The Witches of Karres - novelette by James H. Schmitz E for Effort - novelette by T. L. Sherred In Hiding - novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras The Big Front Yard - novella by Clifford D. Simak The Moon Moth - novelette by Jack Vance
Pharos and Pharillon
Alexandria, Egypt: at one point a trading hub and a cosmopolitan crossroads of the world. It was also the place where, during World War I, E.M. Forster fell in love with a young Egyptian man. Pharos and Pharillon is a collection of essays and articles he wrote about Alexandria, mostly written during that time and dedicated to that man, Mohammed el Adl. Organized in two parts, the book opens with Pharos and seven stories that paint a poetic picture of the ancient city and its history. The second half, Pharillon, consists of four stories, followed by Forster’s moving introduction of the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy to the English-speaking world. The division in the book is signaled by Cavafy’s now famous poem, "The God Abandons Antony."
Arctic summer, and other fiction
Embarking on a tour of Italy with his wife and mother-in-law, Martin Whitby slips and falls under a train. Owing his rescue to the quick thinking of a young soldier, he feels obliged to thank the youth and so pursues the acquaintance. The two men differ sharply in outlook and opinion, however, and part rudely. But once back in England, Martin finds himself called upon by the soldier with an urgent request for help. British novelist E.M. Forster (1879-1971) is the author of several 20th-century classics, including A Room with a View, Howard's End, and A Passage to India.
The light fantastic
The muse / by Anthony Burgess -- The unsafe deposit box / by Gerald Kersh -- Something strange / by Kingsley Amis -- Sold to Satan / by Mark Twain -- The end of the party / by Graham Greene -- The circular ruins / by Jorge Luis Borges -- The shout / by Robert Graves -- The door / by E.B. White -- The machine stops / by E.M. Forster -- The Mark Gable Foundation / by Leo Szilard -- The enormous radio / by John Cheever -- The finest story in the world / by Rudyard Kipling -- The Shoddy Lands / by C.S. Lewis
