Edward Morgan Forster was born January 1, 1879 in London and was
raised from infancy by his mother and paternal aunts after his
father's death. Forster’s boyhood experiences at the Tonbridge
School, Kent were an unpleasant contrast to the happiness he found
at home, and his suffering left him with an abiding dislike of the
English public school system. At King’s College, Cambridge, however
he was able to pursue freely his varied interests in philosophy,
literature and Mediterranean civilization, and he soon determined
to devote his life to writing.
His first two novels, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and The
Longest Journey (1907), were both poorly received, and it was not
until the publication of Howards End, in 1910, that Forster
achieved his first major success as a novelist, with the work many
considered his finest creation.
Forster first visited India during 1912 and 1913, and after three
years as a noncombatant in Alexandria, Egypt, during World War I
and several years in England, he returned for an extended visit in
1921. From those experiences came his most celebrated novel, A
Passage to India, his darkest and most probing work and perhaps the
best novel about India written by a foreigner.
As a man of letters , Forster was honored during and after World
War II for his resistance to any and all forms of tyranny and
totalitarianism, and King’s College awarded him a permanent
fellowship in 1949. Forster spent his later years at Cambridge
writing and teaching, and died at Coventry, England, on June 7,
1970. His novel, Maurice, written several decades earlier, was
published posthumously in 1971.
With a new Introduction by James Ivory
Commentary by Virginia Woolf, Lionel Trilling, Malcolm Bradbury,
and Joseph Epstein
"Howards End is a classic English novel . . . superb and wholly
cherishable . . . one that admirers have no trouble reading over
and over again," said Alfred Kazin.
First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M.
Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie two
families—the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured
and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen
Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a
series of events is sparked—some very funny, some very tragic—that
results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the
Wilcoxes' charming country home. As much about the clash between
individual wills as the clash between the sexes and the classes,
Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, "Only connect," remains
a powerful prescription for modern life.
"Howards End is undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece; it develops to
their full the themes and attitudes of [his] early books and throws
back upon them a new and enhancing light," wrote the critic Lionel
Trilling.
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