Based on exclusive access to E. M. Forster's previously restricted diaries this scrupulously researched and sensitively written biography is the first to put the fact that he was homosexual back at the heart of his story.

After a rich Edwardian widow impulsively marries a handsome but poor Tuscan dentist and dies in childbirth, her English relatives try to gain custody of the baby.

A major reassessment of the one of the greatest English novelist of the twentieth century, from celebrated critic Sir Frank Kermode. CONCERNING E.M. FORSTER is a rich, varied and original portrait of a literary great. When Sir Frank Kermode delivered the Clark Lectures at Cambridge University, he chose E.M. Forster as his subject; these lectures form the core of this book. Kermode reappraises the influence and meaning of Forster's oeuvre, offering a fascinating interpretation of his most celebrated work, A PASSAGE TO INDIA. There follows a series of interweaving discussions that bring to life diverse topics - Empire, class, poverty, the condition of the novel, the role of the artist - but always return to our enigmatic subject. Kermode also reflects on Forster's considerable talent and shortcomings, places him within a wider social context, and casts spotlight on his contemporaries, presenting a unique panorama of twentieth-century English literature.

An essential companion to A Passage to India, a collection of the author’s own letters that read like “a close personal friend has shared his impressions” (Kirkus Reviews). In 1912, a young E. M. Forster traveled to India to serve as a secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas, a small Indian state. He was elevated to the rank of a minor noble, and eventually given the state’s highest honor, the Tukoji Rao III gold medal. This brief episode in Forster’s life became the basis for his masterwork, A Passage to India. In the letters included in The Hill of Devi, he shares his personal journey of discovering his beloved India for the first time. Forster paints a vivid, intimate picture of Dewas State—a strange, bewildering, and enchanting slice of pre-independence India. In this collection, Forster shares insight into the lives of Indian royalty and accounts of the stark contrast between their excesses and the poverty he encounters. From letters that set the scene for Forster’s lifelong friendship with the Maharaja, to an essay on the Maharaja himself and Forster’s experiences as the Maharaja’s personal secretary, The Hill of Devi is a fascinating chronicle of the author’s experience in the land he called “the oddest corner of the world outside Alice in Wonderland.”

A critical analysis of the composition of the novel form rather than an historical view.; Includes a section on fantasy as a genre.

Howard's End: A wealthy family bound by the rules of tradition and property, two independent, cultured sisters, and a young man living on the edge of poverty. A room with a view: Lucy Honeychurch falls in love while on a visit to Florence and must choose between fulfilling her social role or following her heart. Where angels fear to tread: Forster's first novel, a marvelously assured tragicomedy of English men and women adrift in Italy--now the basis for a major motion picture. When a young English widow has the effrontery to marry a penniless Italian while on the grand tour, her proper relations take it upon themselves to set things right.

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the general reader. He provides essential reading for students, aspiring writers and anyone who wants to understand how fiction works.