Michael D. Amey
“My defence at any Last Judgement would be ‘I was trying to connect up and use all the fragments I was born with.’” E. M. Forster
“Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.” E. M. Forster
1 January 1879 – Born to Alicia (aka Lilly) Clara Whichelo and Edward (aka Eddie) Morgan Llewellyn Forster. Lilly’s father was an impoverished drawing master who died when Lilly was twelve. Eddie’s father was a clergyman, and was connected to the Clapham sect – a strict, evangelical social reform group. Their values had an ongoing influence on Forster, and his writing frequently reflects those values. Eddie’s family had, in contrast to Lilly’s family, a significant amount of money, which would allow them to support Forster. Eddie, Forster’s father, was an architect.
30 October 1880 – Eddie Forster dies. The death of Eddie means that Lily, and Forster’s aunts, will play a major role in raising Forster. Forster will live with his mother most of the time until her death in 1945. Forster would later write to Bob Buckingham, “Although my mother has been intermittently tiresome for the last 30 years, cramped and warped my genius, hindered my career, blocked and buggered up my house, and boycotted my beloved, I have to admit she has provided a sort of rich subsoil where I have been able to rest and grow. That, rather than sex or wifiness, seems to be women’s special gift to men.”
1883 – 1893 – Forster and his mother live in a house in Hertfordshire that becomes the model for Howards End.
1895 – Oscar Wilde is imprisoned for “sodomy and gross indecency”.
1897-1901 Forster enrolls at King’s College Cambridge and becomes involved with a discussion group, “the Apostles” where he meets people who will become part of the Bloomsbury Group in the early 20th century.
1901-1902 Forster travels through Greece and Italy with his mother. Their stay in a pension in Italy provided inspiration for the setting of A Room with a View.
1903 Forster starts writing A Room with a View.
1905 Where Angels Fear to Tread. Lionel Trilling, “Forster’s first novel appeared in 1905. The author was 26, not a remarkable age at which to have written a first novel unless the novel be, as Forster’s was, a whole and mature work dominated by a fresh and commanding intelligence.”
1906 Forster meets and falls in love with Syed Ross Masood, a young Indian man.
Masood “woke me up out of my suburban and academic life, showed me new horizons and a new civilization and helped me towards the understanding of a continent… There never was anyone like him and there never will be anyone like him” (Moffat 91).
1907 The Longest Journey.
1908 A Room with a View.
1909 “The Machine Stops”
1910 Howard’s End.
1912-1913 Forster visits India.
1913 Forster begins Maurice – a celebration of same-sex love. He also starts writing A Passage to India.
28 July 1914 The Great War (World War I) begins.
1915 – 1919 Forster is a conscientious objector, who served out the First World War as a Red Cross volunteer in Egypt.
1921 Forster returns to India for a visit.
1924 A Passage to India. This is Forster’s last novel. He continues to write short stories, essays and non-fiction.
1927 Forster is elected a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. He delivers a series of lectures on novels that are later collected into Aspects of the Novel.
1930 Forster meets police officer Bob Buckingham. Forster falls in love with Bob, and the two have a relationship that includes Bob’s wife, May, until Forster’s death. Forster
wrote, in response to Bob’s praise of Bob’s sexual satisfaction with May,
“I felt a bit sad at some of the things you said yesterday, not that you meant to make me sad, but you made me think of my limitations whereas generally you make me forget them. I believe that you are right—that particular experiences which I can’t ever have might make the two people who share it feel they are in touch with the universe through each other. What a pity all (normal) people don’t get it” (qtd. in Moffat 239).
1930s – 1940s Forster is a broadcaster for BBC
1 September 1939 World War II begins.
1943 Lionel Trilling’s E. M. Forster is published. This along with the reprints of Forster’s novels leads to a “Forster revival”.
1945 Forster revisits India. Lily, Forster’s mother, dies.
28 June 1969 The Stonewall Riots occur in New York City.
7 June 1970 Forster dies.
1971 Maurice is published.
Work Cited
Moffat, Wendy. A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
The Spoilers 