E. M. Forster
| E. M. Forster | |
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E. M. Forster, by Dora Carrington c. 1924–1925
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| Born | Edward Morgan Forster 1 January 1879 Marylebone, Middlesex, England |
| Died | 7 June 1970 (aged 91) Coventry, Warwickshire, England |
| Occupation | Writer (novels, short stories, essays) |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | Tonbridge School |
| Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge |
| Period | 1901–70 |
| Genre | Realism, symbolism, modernism |
| Subject | Class division, gender, homosexuality |
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Edward Morgan Forster OM CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), known by his pen name E. M. Forster, was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. Many of his novels examined class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. His novel A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years.
Forster was born into an Anglo-Irish and Welsh middle-class family at 6 Melcombe Place, Dorset Square, London NW1, in a building that no longer exists. He was the only child of Alice Clara "Lily" (née Whichelo) and Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster, an architect. His name was officially registered as Henry Morgan Forster, but at his baptism he was accidentally named Edward Morgan Forster. To distinguish him from his father, he was always called Morgan. His father died of tuberculosis on 30 October 1880, before Morgan's second birthday. In 1883, Forster and his mother moved to Rooksnest, near Stevenage, Herfordshire. This house served as a model for Howard's End, because he had fond memories of his childhood there. Among Forster's ancestors were members of the Clapham Sect, a social reform group within the Church of England.
He inherited £8,000 (£802,290 as of 2015; £1,735,000 in terms of gold sovereigns [1883 tr.oz.]) from his paternal great-aunt Marianne Thornton (daughter of the abolitionist Henry Thornton), who died on 5 November 1887. The money was enough to live on and enabled him to become a writer. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent, as a day boy. The theatre at the school has been named in his honour.
At King's College, Cambridge, between 1897 and 1901, he became a member of a discussion society known as the Apostles (formally named the Cambridge Conversazione Society). They met in secret, and discussed their work on, and about philosophical and moral questions. Many of its members went on to constitute what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group, of which Forster was a peripheral member in the 1910s and 1920s. There is a famous recreation of Forster's Cambridge at the beginning of The Longest Journey. The Schlegel sisters of Howards End are based to some degree on Vanessa and Virginia Stephen.
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