E.M. Forster - IMDb IMDb Writer E.M. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England as Edward Morgan Forster. He was a writer, known for A Passage to India (1984), A Room with a View (1985) and Howards End (1992). He died on June 7, 1970 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England. See full bio » Born: a list of 90 people created 31 Mar 2011 a list of 464 people created 08 May 2011 a list of 4 people created 07 Dec 2011 a list of 203 people created 27 Jan 2012 a list of 169 people created 18 Jun 2014 Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of E.M. Forster's work have you seen? User Polls 1 win & 1 nomination.

See more awards » Known For 2007 A Room with a View (TV Movie) (novel) 2000/II Desire (Short) (short story) 1998 Billy Budd (TV Movie) (libretto) 1998 Plug (Short) (short story "The Machine Stops") 1988 Billy Budd (TV Movie) (libretto) 1987 Maurice (from the novel by) 1984 A Passage to India (based on the novel by) / (by) 1977 Premiere (TV Mini-Series) (short story - 1 episode) - The Obelisk (1977) ... (short story) BBC Play of the Month (TV Series) (novel - 3 episodes, 1965 - 1973) (original author - 1 episode, 1966) 1945 A Diary for Timothy (Short documentary) (commentary) Hide 1959 Camera Three (TV Series) Himself 1970 E.M.

Forster 1879-1970 (TV Movie) Himself - Subject Personal Details Other Works: Stage: His novel, "A Room with a View," was adapted to the stage by Christina Calvit at the Lifeline Theatre in Chicago, IL. See more » Publicity Listings: Did You Know? Personal Quote: If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Such a choice may scandalize the modern reader, and he may stretch out his hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police. It would not have shocked Dante though. Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circles of Hell because they had chosen their friend ... See more » Trivia: Educated at Tonbridge School, Kent. The E. M. Forster Theatre opened at the school in 2000. See more » Star Sign: E.M. Forster - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss. E.M. Forster Biography of E.M. Forster E. M.

Forster (1879-1970), noted English author wrote Howards End (1910); The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catherine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. Amabat, amare timebat. And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him. It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. Nor was the message difficult to give.

It need not take the form of a good "talking." By quiet indications the bridge would be built and span their lives with beauty. But she failed. For there was one quality in Henry for which she was never prepared, however much she reminded herself of it: his obtuseness.--Ch. 22 The relationship between Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox shows us the importance of our connection with ourselves, each other, and the world at large. Howards End was Forsters' first critically acclaimed novel and as with many of his works, successfully adapted to the screen. Heavy in symbolism, Forster explores themes of class, repression, mysticism, sexuality, individualism, British Imperialism, and social realism. Forster was outraged by the treatment of Oscar Wilde and the treatment of homosexuals as criminals, and his essay "What I Believe" (1939) outlines much of his secular humanist views. Using quotes from such authors he esteemed as William Shakespeare and Walt Whitman , inspired by Samuel Butler and Jane Austen , and at times evoking Thomas Hardy or D.H. Lawrence , today many of Forster's works have been translated to dozens of languages, and are widely read and studied.

Edward Morgan Forster was born on 1 January 1879 in London, England to Alice Clara nï¿½e Whichelo (1855-1945) and architect Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster (1847-1880) who died soon after his son was born. Living at Rooksnest (which would later prove the model for Howards End near Stevenage in Hertfordshire) young Edward was raised by his mother, aunts, and governesses. A precocious young man, he started writing stories at the age of six. He attended the Tonbridge School in Kent County, then went on to study history, philosophy, and literature at King's College, Cambridge. He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1900. Although his public school years were unhappy, at King's he blossomed under tutors and the atmosphere of intellectual freedom. He joined groups like the Cambridge Conversazione Society, also known as the Cambridge Apostles, and met lifelong friends including Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932). Many of them went on to form the Bloomsbury Group.

After coming into an inheritance from his Great Aunt Marianne Thornton (1797-1887), Forster was off on his first of many trips to Europe with his mother. They visited Italy, then Greece, where Forster first experienced the Mediterranean culture he would grow to love and write about. When he was not travelling he lived with his mother at Abinger Hammer in Surrey until her death in 1944. Forster knew early on he would be a writer and was fortunate enough to not experience financial hardships. His first of many sketches, essays, and stories was printed in the Independent Review in 1904. Later, he contributed greatly to the London literary journal The Athenaeum. His first novel Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), set in Tuscany, was followed by his Bildungsroman novel The Longest Journey (1907), Rickie Elliot being one of his most autobiographical characters. A Room With a View (1908) was Forsters next work, a romance set in Italy, contrasted with Edwardian England's society and mores.

While he started writing Maurice in 1912, it was not officially published until after his death in 1971. During World War I, while Forster was in Alexandria, Egypt serving with the Red Cross, he met and fell in love with Mohammed el Adl (1900-1922), a young tram conductor. He also penned short stories that were printed in local newspapers under his pseudonym 'Pharos'. Works inspired by this period of his life include Alexandria: A History and Guide (1922) and Pharos and Pharillon: A Novelist's Sketchbook of Alexandria Through the Ages (1923), printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf 's Hogarth Press. Forster also spent much time in India and became well-acquainted with the conflict between the British Raj and the Indian Independence Movement of which he wrote about in A Passage to India (1924), his last novel to reach international acclaim. In recognition he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse. Forster was deeply committed to numerous literary causes during his lifetime including PEN, the international association of writers.

He was a witness for the defence in the obscenity case of D.H. Lawrence 's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. As an Honorary Fellow at Cambridge, he lectured there and was a well-known and respected figure on campus. After the death of his mother he maintained residences at Cambridge and in London. In the 1950's he worked with Eric Crozier to write the libretto to Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville 's 1924 novel of the same name. In 1953 he was awarded the Order of Companions of Honor and in 1969 given Queen Elizabeth's Order of Merit. At the age of ninety, on 7 June 1970, Edward Morgan Forster died at the home in Coventry of friend and long-time companion Robert Buckingham. Other titles by E. M.

Forster include; The Celestial Omnibus (short stories, 1914), The Eternal Moment (1928), Abinger Pageant (short stories, 1934), England's Pleasant Land (1940), The Hill of Devi (1953), and Arctic Summer (unfinished). Howards End Movie Review & Film Summary (1992) | Roger Ebert Tweet "Howards End," a film at once civilized and passionate, is named for a house in the English countryside. It has been in the Wilcox family for a long time - or, more properly, in the family of Mrs. Wilcox, who makes it the center of her life and retreats to its peace when the noise of life in London with Mr. Wilcox grows too deafening. Advertisement In America, where we change our address as easily as we change our telephone number, the meaning of such a house is harder to understand. We do not often grow up in the same rooms where our grandparents were born.

But in a country such as England, until quite recently, many families had such houses in their histories, and "Howards End" is about the passing of the traditionals and humanist values that could flourish in such places. The story of the house and the people who pass through it is told by E. M. Forster, in the best of his novels and one of the last (after A Passage to India, A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread and Maurice) to be filmed. The year is 1910. Mrs. Wilcox ( Vanessa Redgrave ) develops an admiration for Margaret Schlegel ( Emma Thompson ), who belongs to a musical family with a British mother and a German father (but not "Germans of the dreadful sort," Forster confides). She finds she can talk to Margaret - she recognizes a spark in the girl that reminds her of herself. When she dies, her family is horrified to discover a scrawled, unsigned coda to her will, leaving the house to Margaret. Advertisement They burn the scrap of paper ("Mother couldn't have meant it"), and agree to say nothing about it. But life has a way of correcting errors.

Margaret, who is young and beautiful by our standards but old enough to be on the edge of spinsterhood by the standards of her day, catches the eye of the bereaved Mr. Wilcox, a very rich, shy, abrupt banker played by Anthony Hopkins . He proposes, or more exactly croaks out some tortured syllables which seem to express esteem and desire. She interprets, and accepts. And she comes home to Howards End. But this is not a melodrama about inheritances. It is a film about values. Other characters are involved, especially Margaret's sister, Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), and the desperately poor and unhappy Mr. Leonard Bast (Sam West), who meets the Schlegels through an incident of a lost umbrella, and becomes the victim of their attempts to help him. Mr. Wilcox, asked for advice on Mr. Bast's job prospects, advises him to leave a thriving company and join one which soon goes bankrupt, and when the girls cry out that poor Mr.

Bast is now worse off than he was before, Wilcox replies, not complacently, "The poor are the poor, and one's sorry for them - but there it is." The fiery Helen will not stand for this, and indeed produces poor Mr. Bast at her sister's wedding fete on the lawns of Howards End, where Bast, the leper at the feast, discovers along with everyone else that his slovenly wife knows Mr. Wilcox far better than she should. This development leads to the story's angry outcry against hypocrisy, as Helen denounces her sister and Margaret denounces her husband - not for immorality, but for failing to apply to himself the same standards he would apply to others. Advertisement "Howards End" is one of the best novels of the 20th century. Read it. This film adaptation, by the team of director James Ivory , writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and producer Ismail Merchant , is one of the best movies of the year - one of the best collaborations ever by these three, who specialize in literate adaptations of novels of manners (" A Room with a View ," " The Bostonians ," "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge").

"Howards End" is such a good story, partly because Forster himself was a master storyteller who was particularly gifted at strong endings, partly because the splendid cast embodies the characters so fully that the events actually seem to be happening to them, instead of unfolding from a screenplay. Advertisement Emma Thompson is superb in the central role: quiet, ironic, observant, with steel inside. Helena Bonham Carter has never been better than she is here, as the hothead who commits her mind and body to the radical new social ideas of the times. Anthony Hopkins gives a heartbreaking performance as a man who wants to change and wants to love, but finally cannot quite bring himself to break through the hidebound reactionary impulses which protect him from his better nature. And Vanessa Redgrave, as the dying Mrs. Wilcox, casts a spell over the whole movie; if we do not believe in her values, and understand what she sees in Margaret and why she wants her to have the house, we miss the whole point. What a beautiful film it is: Not an overdecorated "period" adaptation, but a film in which the people move easily through town and country homes and landscapes which frame and define them.

The house used as Howards End in the film is the very same house, I am informed, that Forster used as a model in writing his novel. It is easy to imagine standing on the lawn and understanding what such a house could mean. Paul Goodman once wrote, "As an architect draws, men live," by which among other things he possibly meant that good houses inspire good lives. Here is a house that sets such a test that a whole society is challenged. Popular Blog Posts Howards End : E. M. Forster : 9780375753763 E. M. Forster Classics Review quote 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, & quot; 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, & quot; Only connect, & quot; remains a powerful prescription for modern life. & quot; 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, & quot; wrote the critic Lionel Trilling. E. M. Forster (1879-1970) began writing stories while at Cambridge University. He is the author of Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924). His novelMaurice, about a homosexual love affair, was published posthumously in 1971.

James Ivory is an American film director and is best known for the films he has made of E. M. Forster's novels, including Howards End, which enjoyed immense critical and popular success. He lives in New York City. show more Flap copy Introduction by Alfred Kazan "From the Hardcover edition. show more About E. M. Forster 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." show more Back cover copy "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."--BOOK JACKET.

show more Follow us Howards End : E M Forster : 9780679722557 9780679722557 Classics Review quote 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, & quot; 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, & quot; Only connect, & quot; remains a powerful prescription for modern life. & quot; 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, & quot; wrote the critic Lionel Trilling. E. M. Forster (1879-1970) began writing stories while at Cambridge University. He is the author of Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924). His novelMaurice, about a homosexual love affair, was published posthumously in 1971. James Ivory is an American film director and is best known for the films he has made of E. M. Forster's novels, including Howards End, which enjoyed immense critical and popular success. He lives in New York City.

show more About E M Forster 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. show more Flap copy "Only Connect," Forster's key aphorism, informs this novel about an English country house, Howards End, and its influence on the lives of the wealthy and materialistic Wilcoxes; the cultured, idealistic Schlegel sisters; and the poor bank clerk Leonard Bast. Bringing together people from different classes and nations by way of sympathetic insight and understanding, Howards End eloquently addresses the question "Who shall inherit England?" (Lionel Trilling). show more Follow us E.M. Forster - Modernism Lab Essays E.M.

Forster by Anthony Domestico E.M. Forster (1879-1970) is difficult writer to classify. An Edwardian modernist, he criticized Victorian middle class mores in formally traditional novels; a writer who idealized connection and sincerity above all else, he kept his own homosexuality hidden from view but defended D.H. Lawrence ’s sexually daring Lady Chatterley’s Lover from obscenity charges. Forster’s enduring achievement rests upon his novels, including Howards End ( 1910 ) and A Passage to India ( 1924 ), his critical study Aspects of the Novel ( 1927 ), and his continuing, principled defense of liberal humanism despite the upheavals of the early twentieth century. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England. His father died soon after his birth, and he was raised by his mother and a series of aunts and governesses. As a child, Forster received an inheritance from his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton that enabled him to travel and, later, write with little concern for finances.

Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge from 1897 to 1901, studying history, literature, and philosophy. He became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a discussion society steeped in philosophical skepticism that shaped Forster’s liberalism and led him to shed his Christian faith. Among the Apostles who had a formative intellectual influence upon Forster were Sir James Frazer, G.E. Moore, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, and several future members of the Bloomsbury Group. After graduation, Forster traveled throughout Europe and Asia, visiting Italy, Greece, Germany, India, and Egypt. This experience would inform Forster’s cosmopolitanism and his abiding interest in foreign cultures, an interest reflected in A Passage to India and A Room with a View. Forster contributed stories and sketches to the Independent Review in 1904, and later published a number of works in the Athenaeum, a London literary magazine that also printed work by Thomas Hardy , T.S. Eliot , and others. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread , was published in 1905 .

Two years later, he published The Longest Journey ( 1907 ), a Bildungsroman that begins at Cambridge and is perhaps Forster’s most autobiographical work. Forster’s next two novels, A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910), secured his place as one of the leading British writers of his generation. He was a comic moralist, a writer interested in exploring conflicts between ideologies that oftentimes resulted in melodrama. In Howards End, for instance, Forster used the tension between the Schlegel family, exemplars of liberalism and bohemianism, and the Wilcoxes, plutocratic businessmen, as a means to structure his plot and subtly explore the various possible stances towards life of the modern period. In 1924, Forster published A Passage to India, his most successful novel. A deeply symbolic, mystical book that examines the nature of colonial rule, A Passage to India reveals Forster’s interest in both politics and religion, in the practical and the numinous. Forster did not publish another novel after A Passage to India, spending the last forty-six years of his life writing short stories and non-fiction.

His homosexual novel Maurice , written in 1913 - 1914 , was published posthumously in 1971. His 1938 essay “Two Cheers for Democracy” reveals Forster at his best: gently ironic, tolerant yet chiding, willing to take a principled stand in defense of liberal values. E. M. Forster - Wikiquote E. M. Forster Jump to: navigation , search There's enough sorrow in the world , isn't there, without trying to invent it. See also: Maurice Only connect ! … Only connect the prose and the passion , and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die . Contents Quotes[ edit ] Poetry is a spirit ; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth . There is fascism , leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol … It means change without hope . Our immediate duty … is to stop it. I am the means and not the end . I am the food and not the life.

Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit ; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth . "The Celestial Omnibus" (1911) There is fascism , leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol , into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war . It means change without hope . Our immediate duty — in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub — our immediate duty is to stop it. "Notes on the Way", Time and Tide Magazine (10 June 1934); reprinted in The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings (1998) Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)[ edit ] Romance only dies with life . No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque.

A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better. Ch. 2 A wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and — by some sad, strange irony — it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy. Ch. 7 I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God , and thank Italy , and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before. Ch.

8 This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened. "Thank you," was all that he permitted himself. "Thank you for everything." Ch. 10 It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth. Ch.1 There's enough sorrow in the world , isn't there, without trying to invent it. Ch. 2 The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world ; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but transalate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Ch.

3 Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. Ch. 14 It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal . Ch. 19 Main article: The Machine Stops Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere — buttons to call for food for music, for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button that produced literature. and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world. Ch. 1 She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion ...

Connect — connect without bitterness until all men are brothers. He remembered his wife's even goodness during thirty years. Not anything in detail — not courtship or early raptures —but just the unvarying virtue, that seemed to him a woman's noblest quality. So many women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity. Not so his wife. Year after year, summer and winter, as bride and mother, she had been the same, he had always trusted her. Her tenderness! Her innocence! The wonderful innocence that was hers by the gift of God . Ruth knew no more of worldly wickedness and wisdom than did the flowers in her garden, or the grass in her field. Her idea of business — "Henry, why do people who have enough money try to get more money?" Her idea of politics — "I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars ," Her idea of religion — ah, this had been a cloud , but a cloud that passed. She came of Quaker stock, and he and his family, formerly Dissenters, were now members of the Church of England.

The rector's sermons had at first repelled her, and she had expressed a desire for "a more inward light," adding, "not so much for myself as for baby" (Charles). Inward light must have been granted, for he heard no complaints in later years. They brought up their three children without dispute. They had never disputed. She lay under the earth now. She had gone, and as if to make her going the more bitter, had gone with a touch of mystery that was all unlike her. Ch. 11 There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end. Ch. 15 Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever and not this outer life of telegrams and anger. Ch. 19 She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire.

Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going. Ch. 22 Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. Ch. 22 In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect — connect without bitterness until all men are brothers. Ch. 33 Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Ch. 3 All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. Ch. 4 Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.

Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself", or , “I am horrified,” we are insincere. Ch. 14 Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value. Ch. 14 'Why can't we be friends now?' said the other, holding him affectionately. 'It's what I want. It's what you want.' But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices 'No, not yet,' and the sky said 'No, not there.' Ch.

37 Aspects of the Novel (1927)[ edit ] If God could tell the story of the Universe , the Universe would become fictitious . If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way... As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider. Chapter One: Introductory A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver — in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter. Chapter One: Introductory If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious. Chapter Three: People A man does not talk to himself quite truly — not even to himself: the happiness or misery that he secretly feels proceeds from causes that he cannot quite explain, because as soon as he raises them to the level of the explicable they lose their native quality.

The novelist has a real pull here. He can show the subconscious short-circuiting straight into action (the dramatist can do this too); he can also show it in its relation to soliloquy. He commands all the secret life, and he must not be robbed of this privilege. "How did the writer know that?" it is sometimes said. "What's his standpoint? He is not being consistent, he's shifting his point of view from the limited to the omniscient, and now he's edging back again." Questions like this have too much the atmosphere of the law courts about them. Chapter Five: The Plot How can I tell what I think till I see what I say? Chapter Five: The Plot Most of us will be eclectics to this side or that according to our temperament. The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this.

It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful." Chapter Seven: Prophecy If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. Chapter Nine: Conclusion What I Believe (1938)[ edit ] First published in The Nation (16 July 1938) One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life . One can, at all events, show one's own little light here, one's own poor little trembling flame , with the knowledge that it is not the only light that is shining in the darkness , and not the only one which the darkness does not comprehend. Two cheers for Democracy : one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism . Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal . The Saviour of the future — if ever he comes — will not preach a new Gospel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy, he will make effective the goodwill and the good temper which are already existing. I do not believe in Belief . But this is an Age of Faith , and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance , good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules , and Science , which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life , and it is therefore essential that they should not let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must, myself, be as reliable as possible, and this I try to be. But reliability is not a matter of contract — that is the main difference between the world of personal relationships and the world of business relationships.

It is a matter for the heart, which signs no documents. In other words, reliability is impossible unless there is a natural warmth. Most men possess this warmth, though they often have bad luck and get chilled. Most of them, even when they are politicians, want to keep faith. And one can, at all events, show one's own little light here, one's own poor little trembling flame, with the knowledge that it is not the only light that is shining in the darkness, and not the only one which the darkness does not comprehend. I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. This has sometimes been misquoted as: If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the decency to betray my country. There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer. Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support.

It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do. The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy. Whether Parliament is either a representative body or an efficient one is questionable, but I value it because it criticizes and talks, and because its chatter gets widely reported. So two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. I realize that all society rests upon force.

But all the great creative actions, all the decent human relations, occur during the intervals when force has not managed to come to the front. These intervals are what matter. I want them to be as frequent and as lengthy as possible, and I call them " civilization ". Some people idealize force and pull it into the foreground and worship it, instead of keeping it in the background as long as possible. I think they make a mistake, and I think that their opposites, the mystics , err even more when they declare that force does not exist. I believe that it exists, and that one of our jobs is to prevent it from getting out of its box. It gets out sooner or later, and then it destroys us and all the lovely things which we have made. But it is not out all the time, for the fortunate reason that the strong are so stupid. The Valkyries are symbols not only of courage but of intelligence; they represent the human spirit snatching its opportunity while the going is good, and one of them even finds time to love.

Bruennhilde's last song hymns the recurrence of love, and since it is the privilege of art to exaggerate she goes even further, and proclaims the love which is eternally triumphant, and feeds upon freedom and lives. The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing-holes for the human spirit. No millennium seems likely to descend upon humanity; no better and stronger Ieague of Nations will be instituted; no form of Christianity and no alternative to Christianity will bring peace to the world or integrity to the individual; no "change of heart" will occur. And yet we need not despair, indeed, we cannot despair; the evidence of history shows us that men have always insisted on behaving creatively under the shadow of the sword; that they have done their artistic and scientific and domestic stuff for the sake of doing it, and that we had better follow their example under the shadow of the aeroplanes.

Others, with more vision or courage than myself, see the salvation of humanity ahead, and will dismiss my conception of civilization as paltry, a sort of tip-and-run game. Certainly it is presumptuous to say that we cannot improve, and that Man, who has only been in power for a few thousand years, will never learn to make use of his power. All I mean is that, if people continue to kill one another as they do, the world cannot get better than it is, and that, since there are more people than formerly, and their means for destroying one another superior, the world may well get worse. What is good in people — and consequently in the world — is their insistence on creation, their belief in friendship and loyalty for their own sakes; and, though Violence remains and is, indeed, the major partner in this muddled establishment, I believe that creativeness remains too, and will always assume direction when violence sleeps. So, though I am not an optimist, I cannot agree with Sophocles that it were better never to have been born. And although, like Horace , I see no evidence that each batch of births is superior to the last, I leave the field open for the more complacent view.

This is such a difficult moment to live in, one cannot help getting gloomy and also a bit rattled, and perhaps short-sighted. An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness — much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable. I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper. I believe in aristocracy, though — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names.

They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart's affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world. With this type of person knocking about, and constantly crossing one's path if one has eyes to see or hands to feel, the experiment of earthly life cannot be dismissed as a failure.

But it may well be hailed as a tragedy, the tragedy being that no device has been found by which these private decencies can be transmitted to public affairs. As soon as people have power they go crooked and sometimes dotty as well, because the possession of power lifts them into a region where normal honesty never pays. The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink; the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events restrained by taboos. The Saviour of the future — if ever he comes — will not preach a new Gospel. He will merely utilize my aristocracy, he will make effective the goodwill and the good temper which are already existing. In other words, he will introduce a new technique. In economics, we are told that if there was a new technique of distribution there need be no poverty, and people would not starve in one place while crops were being ploughed under in another. A similar change is needed in the sphere of morals and politics.

… Not by becoming better, but by ordering and distributing his native goodness, will Man shut up Force into its box, and so gain time to explore the universe and to set his mark upon it worthily. At present he only explores it at odd moments, when Force is looking the other way, and his divine creativeness appears as a trivial by-product, to be scrapped as soon as the drums beat and the bombers hum. Naked I came into this world, naked I shall go out of it. And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour. Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)[ edit ] This title comes from a phrase from his 1938 essay "What I Believe" which is the first essay in the book. [Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends. "Tolerance" Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

"Tolerance" Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes. "Cambridge" A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. "Anonymity: An Enquiry" What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse. "Anonymity: An Enquiry" Commonplace Book (1985), edited by Philip Gardner Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise. p. 6 Long books , when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time. p. 11 Probable that I am now better than most people and as good as I ever shall be at this game, and can therefore get to know anyone I wish, provided I am not physically repellent. And perhaps this is why personal relationships no longer seem to me a serious branch of study. p.

45 I don't think literature will be purged until its philosophic pretentiousness is extruded, and I shant live to see that purge, nor perhaps when it has happened will anything survive. p. 46 Self-pity ? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage. p. 50 I grudged her nothing except my company. But it has gone further, like the degradation of rural England: this afternoon (Sunday in April) all the young men had women with them in far-flung cameradeie. If women ever wanted to be by themselves all would be well. But I don't believe they ever want to be, except for reasons of advertisement, and their instinct is never to let men be by themselves. This, I begin to see, is sex-war, and D.H.L. has seen it, in spite of a durable marriage, and is far more on the facts than Bernard Shaw and his Life Force. p.

59 No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt : fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. p. 76 [...] it is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing. p. 92 (26-2-32) One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course. p. 92 Today 29-9-34 ion the garden, rockery side, looking up to the house where Bone was working, sky bluish, very gentle, I looked without theories or self consciousness. This happens very seldom, though I can prolong the delight if I prevent my engines from restarting. p. 95 But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters. p. 151 N.B.

this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted. p. 155 (1943) I have very strongly of late the wish that others may be as sensitive as myself and the fear that they will not be. Colleague Sir Frank Adcock stumped by the sunset-portent unheeding. And I can't arge that I gain, or that others would gain, anything for humanity by observing and recording what went on for a few moments in the sky on Boar Race evening. I sometimes pretend to myself that I am public-spirited. I am not. I am an hedonist who wants pleasant sensations. On the other hand I am not the usual type of hedonist, for I want sensations to be had – if not by myself, then by someone else. The show shouldn't end with my death, which becomes a minor boo-hoo. p. 211 (1959) Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace. p.

219 (1960) Going to Bits. This phrase me to day and is indeed the one I have been looking for; not tragic, not mortal disintegration; only a central weakness which prevents me from concentrating or settling down I have so wanted to write and write ahead. The phrase "obligatory creation" has haunted me. I have so wanted to get out of my morning bath promptly: have decided to do so beforehand, and have then lain in it as usual and watched myself not getting out. It looks as if there is a physical as well as a moral break in the orders I send out. I have plenty of interesting thoughts but keep losing them like the post cards I have written, or like my cap. I can't clear anything up yet interrupt a 'good read' in order to clear up. I hope tomorrow to copy out a piece of someone else's pose: it is the best device known to me for taking one out of inself, Plunge into anothers minutiae.' 31-1-61 p.

224 I haven't made my point yet, which is that it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way — otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contrary the Christian danger. p. 243 (1963) Cyril Connolly , Enemies of Promise , 1938 "Two Cheers for Democracy"...[made] a considerable impression. It annoyed many, both orthodox patriots and orthodox Marxists , but they felt outmanoeuvred by it. And many others, sickened of "commitment" by the betrayals and confusions of the Spanish civil war, found it a great support and recognized a heroism in its facing of limitations. P. N. Furbank , E. M. Forster: A Life. Oxford University Press, 1979. (p. 225) His light blue eyes behind his spectacles were like those of a baby who remembers his previous incarnation and is more amused than dismayed to find himself reborn in new surroundings.

He had a baby's vulnerability, which is also the invulnerability of a creature whom one dare not harm. Christopher Isherwood , Christopher and His Kind (1976) ISBN 0374520364 , ch. 6 (p. 106) No government, no big organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India? He could only write it because he was not dependent on State aid. George Orwell , "As I Please" column in Tribune (13 October 1944); reprinted in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945 (1968) Forster took a risk, opening the comic novel to let in the things it was not designed for; small patches of purple prose were the result. But Forster's innovation remains: he allowed the English comic novel the possibility of a spiritual and bodily life, not simply to exist as an exquisitely worked game of social ethics but as a messy human concoction.

He expanded the comic novel's ethical space (while unbalancing its moral certainties) simply by letting more of life in . Austen asks for toleration from her readers. Forster demands something far stickier, more shameful: love. Zadie Smith , " Love, Actually " The Guardian (1 November 2003) He's a mediocre man — and knows it, or suspects it, which is worse; he will come to no good, and in the meantime he's treated rudely by waiters and is not really admired even by middle-class dowagers. Lytton Strachey , Letter to James Strachey, 3 February 1914, in Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography (1968) Forster wrote the five books on which his reputation rests because he desperately needed to create characters and situations that would expose his own plight in ways that were subtle and dramatic without being obvious or explicit. His true nature was not only homosexual, it was also wounded, mysterious and filled with sympathy for others, including foreigners and women.

Despite his best intentions, he allowed all of himself into the five novels published in his lifetime, and only part of himself into “Maurice". Colm Tóibín , in "Lives of the Novelists: E. M. Forster", The New York Times (22 July 2010) The book [A Passage to India] shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment; but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, what will he write next? Virginia Woolf , 'The Novels of E.M. Forster, Atlantic Monthly, November 1927, in E. M. Forster: The Critical Heritage, ed. P. Gardner (1997) The middle age of buggers is not to be contemplated without horror. Virginia Woolf , Diary for 12 March 1922, in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, ed. A. O. Bell (1977-82) M. [Forster] says he would much rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave...

Question: Who wrote "A Room With A View", "Howard's End" and "A Passage To India"?
Answer: E M Forster