born Jan. 1, 1879, London, Eng.
died June 7, 1970, Coventry, Warwickshire
British writer.
Forster was born into an upper-middle-class family. He attended the University of Cambridge and from roughly 1907 was a member of the informal Bloomsbury group . His early works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and his first major success, Howards End (1910), novels that show his acute observation of middle-class life and its values. After periods in India and Alexandria, he wrote his finest novel, A Passage to India (1924), examining the failure of human understanding between ethnic and social groups under British rule. Maurice , a novel with a homosexual theme written in 1913, appeared posthumously. Aspects of the Novel (1927) is a classic discussion of aesthetics and the creative process. Awarded an honorary fellowship in 1946 at Cambridge, he lived there until his death.
E.M. Forster
BBC Hulton Picture Library