E.M. Forster

Since E. M. Forster's death in 1970, his novel Maurice and a volume of short stories have been published for the first time. When it was published in 1976, this book was one of the first full-length critical introductions to Forster's fiction to include these posthumous works. Despite the fact that most of Forster's work deals with life before the First World War, Professor Martin sees him as an essentially modern writer concerned with one of the most fundamental and persistent psychological problems of our time: the gulf between man's spiritual needs and the demands and pressures of society. Professor Martin comments closely on the text and attempts to assess the significance of the travel theme in Forster's writing and the impact of his homosexuality on the content of his fiction: he also highlights important affinities between Forster's work and that of other early twentieth-century writers, including Joyce and D. H. Lawrence.