Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. He wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howard's End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. It won both the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Maurice, his novel on a homosexual theme, finished in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories; two collections of essays; a critical work, Aspects of the Novel; The Hill of Devi, a fascinating record of two visits Forster made to the Indian State of Dewas Senior; two biographies; two books about Alexandria (where he worked for the Red Cross in the First World War); and, with Eric Crozier, the libretto for Britten's opera Billy Budd. He died in June 1970.
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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