Forster, E. M. English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic, Edward Morgan Forster was born in London on 1 January 1879. He was the only son of the architect Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster and Alice Clara Whichelo. Actually, he had been originally named Henry Morgan (after his late paternal uncle, Henry Thornton Forster), but was accidentally baptized as Edward Morgan, after his father.

After gaining fame as a novelist, Forster spent his 46 remaining years publishing mainly short stories and non-fiction. Of his five important novels four appeared before World War I.

Forster's major concern was that individuals should 'connect the prose with the passion' within themselves, and that one of the most exacting aspect of the novel is prophecy. E. M. Forster is probably best known in recent days, ironically, through the film adaptations of his novels.

They were an upper middle class family but unfortuately his father died when of consumption before E.M. Forster was two years old, ultimately leaving Forster to be brought up by two women: his mother Lily and his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton. It was his mother (known as Lily to family and friends) that gave him the awareness of injustice and sense of propriety that is evident in his novels. E.M. Forster shared a house with his mother until her death in 1945.

Forster spent his early childhood years (1883 to 1893) at Rooksnest, which he grew to love dearly. Rooksnest was the house that would later provide the inspiration for an estate in one of his novels -- a house called Howards End.

Forster's life was one of studies and travels. Forster's years at Tonbridge School as a teenager were difficult - he suffered from the cruelty of his classmates.

Forster attended King's College, Cambridge (1897-1901), and throughout his life he remained connected with it, even after he graduated with a degree in Classics and history.

In 1902 he began part-time teaching at the Working Men's College. This continued for over twenty years.

In 1903 he was co-founder of the Independent Review with Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932).

He travelled extensively, living in Italy for several years and also to Greece, Germany Egypt and India, becoming very acquainted with India in particular. These travels provided many of the setitbusngs and situations for his novels and stories.

He had several short stories published in journals such as the Independent Review and his first novel - Where Angels Fear to Tread - was published in 1905 when he was only 26 years old. The "most brilliant, most dramatic and the most passionate of his works" (Lionel Trilling) and his most autobiographical novel The Longest Journey was published two years later in 1907.

A Room with a View followed in 1908, the first part having been written years earlier when the author was in Italy.

Howards End (1910) was a story that centered on an English country house and dealt with the clash between two families, one interested in art and literature, the other only in business. The book brought together the themes of money, business and culture.

When Howards End was published in 1910, Forster, at 31 years of age, was established as a respected and economically successful writer.

Forster became a part of the Bloomsbury Group, "a set of Bohemian thinkers and doers who revolted against the manners and morals of Victorian England" (Jerry Carroll). Besides Forster, other members of the Bloomsbury Group included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey.

In 1912 he visited Edward Carpenter who lived openly with his working-class lover, George Merrill, in a rural cottage in Derbyshire. This became the model for the relationship between Maurice and Alec, the gamekeeper, in Forster's novel Maurice which he began to write in 1913.

Forster also wrote during the pre-war years a number of short stories, which were collected in The Celestial Omnibus (1914). Most of them were symbolic fantasies or fables.

In 1915 he went to Alexandria in Egypt with the Red Cross, and had his first love affair, with Mohammed el Ali, a young Eqyptian tram driver. He also came to know the poet Constantine Cavafy.

He became secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas Senior in India in 1921.

E.M. Forster's last novel, A Passage to India was published in 1924. The story depicts the complicated reaction to the British Raj and has been called "a classic on the strange and tragic fact of history and life in India".

Forster became concerned with civil liberties and in 1928 he rallied public opinion to protest the suppression of the lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall.

He continued to write political essays and biographies and later became a broadcaster for the BBC. He was known as a great humanist and frequently spoke out on affairs of the day.

In 1934 and 1942 he was twice president of the National Council for Civil Liberties. He also served as president of the British Humanist Society.

In 1946 he was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and he lived in Cambridge for the rest of his life.

He is the model for Benjamin Dexter in Graham Greene's novel The Third Man, (1950).

Queen Elizabeth II awarded Forster with membership in the Order of Companions of Honour in 1953, and on 1 January 1969 he received the Order of Merit. With failing health in old age, he experienced a number of strokes toward the end of his life.

Forster died on 7 June 1970, at the Coventry home of his good friends Bob and May Buckingham, where he wished to spend his last moments. His ashes were scattered over the Buckinghams' rose garden. His novel Maurice written between 1913 and 1914 was published posthumously in accordance with his wishes. It was produced as the film Maurice by the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team in 1987.

Edward Morgan Forster. Biography and complete works 27.October.2008

URL: http://www.booksfactory.com/writers/forster.htm

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