Forster, E(dward) M(organ) 1879-1970
English novelist and critic

Born in London, he was educated at Tonbridge School and King's College, Cambridge, where he revelled in the 'Bloomsbury circle' of G E Moore, G M Trevelyan and Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932), with whom he founded the Independent Review in 1903. In his novels he examined with subtle insight the pre-1914 English middle-class ethos and its custodians the Civil Service, the Church and the public schools. Early titles include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910). He became secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas Senior in India in 1921, and in 1924 published his masterpiece, A Passage to India, in which he puts English values and Indian susceptibilities under his finest scrutiny. It was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial and Femina Vie Heureuse prizes in 1925. He also wrote short stories, essays, the Cambridge Clark lectures Aspects of the Novel (1927), biographies of Lowes Dickinson (1934) and Marianne Thornton (1958), and in 1951 he collaborated with Eric Crozier on the libretto of Benjamin Britten's opera, Billy Budd. He was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1946. His novel Maurice (written 1913-14), on the theme of homosexuality, was published posthumously in 1971.

Bibliography: N Beauman, Morgan: a biography of E M Forster (1993); J Beer, The Achievement of E M Forster (1962)