1 January: EM Forster

EM Forster, English author best known for his novels A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924) was born on this date in 1879. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in London. His father was an architect. His parents initially wanted to call him Henry Morgan Forster, but a mistake at his baptism meant he was christened Edward Morgan Forster.

2. His father died when he was two and he was brought up by his mother and his father’s sisters. The aunts were straight-laced and religious while his mother was more easy going. He observed the tensions between them, which informed some of his later writing.

3. One of his childhood homes was Rooks Nest, near Stevenage, Hertfordshire. He would later base the house in Howards End on this house.

4. At university he belonged to a secret society called the Apostles, part of the Christian Scientist Church. They met in secret to discuss philosophical and moral questions.

5. He was a conscientious objector in the First World War and served with the British Red Cross in Alexandria, Egypt, helping to locate missing servicemen.

6. In the 1920s he was private secretary to Tukojirao III, Maharajah of Dewas. The time spent in India in this post inspired A Passage to India, which he wrote on his return to England. Some of his own experiences found their way into the book: he visited the hill caves of Barabar in the North Indian state of Bihar, travelling part of the way by Elephant and the rest on foot, as Adela Quested and Mrs Moore do when they visit the caves of Marabar.

7. One of his novels was not published until after he died in 1971, although he’d written it in 1914. It was called Maurice, and was a tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England.

8. Forster was himself gay. He never married and had a number of male lovers during his life. The most significant of them was a policeman called Bob Buckingham, who was married. Forster was witness to Buckingham's marriage to May Hockey in 1932 and the godfather of their son. At first, he and May didn’t really got on, but in later life they became close. Close enough, in fact, that she insisted that he move in with her so she could take care of him towards the end of his life.

9. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature 22 times.

10. He declined a knighthood in 1949, but received the Order of Merit on his 90th birthday.

See also: EM Forster Quotes

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