Author of the day: E.M. Forster

E. M. Forster was an English writer best known for his novels Howards End and A Passage to India. He was born Edward Morgan Forster on January 1st, 1879 in Marylebone, Middlesex, England, to Alice Clara (nee Whichelo) Forster, and Edward Morgan Llewellyn Forster, an architect. His father died before he was two years old. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent, and then King's College in Cambridge from 1897 to 1901. After graduating from university he traveled with his mother in Europe. His first novel was published in 1905, titled Where Angels Fear to Tread. He went on to write four more novels, the next three of which were written by 1914.

In 1887 he inherited a large sum of money, which enabled him to spend time working on his writing career when he was older.
In 1914 when E. M. Forster traveled to Egypt, Germany, and India with Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, he had already written four of his five novels.
E. M. Forster volunteered with the International Red Cross during the First World War, and was stationed in Alexandria, Egypt.
In the early 1920s E. M. Forster was Tukojirao III's private secretary. He wrote The Hill of Devil, a non-fiction memoir of his experience as private secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas (Tukojirao III).
Upon his return to London from India E. M. Forster wrote his novel A Passage to India, which was published in 1924.
E. M. Forster won the James Tait Black memorial Prize for fiction for A Passage to India.
E. M. Forster became a broadcaster on BBC Radio from the 1930s to the 1940s. George Orwell commissioned his weekly book review, establishing E. M. Forster as a critic. In 1937 Forster received the Benson Medal.
E. M. Forster was friends with other writers including Siegfried Sassoon (a poet), Forrest Reid (novelist), and Christopher Isherwood.
E. M. Forster lived with his mother from 1925 until she died at the age of 90, in 1945.
In January, 1946 E. M. Forster was appointed as an honorary fellow of King's College in Cambridge.
In 1949 Forster declined being knighted, but in 1953 he was made a Companion of Honour.
In 1969 E. M. Forster became a member of the Order of Merit.
E. M. Forster had five novels published during his lifetime including Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924).
A sixth novel titled Maurice was published after E. M. Forster died. Although published in 1971, E. M. Forster wrote the novel in 1913 to 1914.
E. M. Forster also wrote short stories, plays, film scripts, essay collections, biographies, travel guides, and a novel that was not completed titled Arctic Summer.
E. M. Forster died at the age of 91, on June 7th, 1970. He died of a stroke, while at the home of his friends Bob and Mary Buckinghams, in Coventry.
E. M. Forster edited an edition of Eliza Fay's letters from India, which was published in 1925. He described her letters as "little character sketches... delightfully malicious."