But it's an invaluable document about a group of men who experience the love that dare not speak its name (to borrow from Wilde). So very sad.īut how triumphant for Forster to have written this book and dedicated it 'to a happier year.' No one would argue that this is Forster's best novel. He eventually comes up with something about Oscar Wilde. One of the most touching things about this very moving book is seeing the protagonist – the closeted, very ordinary stockbroker Maurice – struggling to describe who he is and what he's feeling.

For a man to be with another man was a criminal offense. When Forster penned Maurice, homosexuality was so taboo that there was no name for it. What a gift to have a novel about same sex love written a century ago by one of the premier 20th century British authors! It eventually came out after his death, in the early 1970s.

Forster ( Howards End, A Room With A View) finished this gay-themed novel in 1914, and though he showed it to some close friends, he didn't publish it in his lifetime. His other works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Maurice (1971), his posthumously published novel which tells of the coming of age of an explicitly gay male character.Į.M. He is noted for his use of symbolism as a technique in his novels, and he has been criticised for his attachment to mysticism. He had five novels published in his lifetime, achieving his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924) which takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj.įorster's views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of personal connections in spite of the restrictions of contemporary society. His humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: 'Only connect'. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster, was an novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Edward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M.

Maurice by E.M. Forster