19th December

In December 1924 he was thinking about fame and money. He wrote to his confidante Florence Garber that 'nothing can stop’ sales of A Passage to India in America, already over 30,000. English sales – 13,000 – were high enough that (he wrote) the government was 'upset’. Being so well-known and well-off left him cold, he said: 'I am not an ascetic, but don’t know what to do with them, and my daily life has never been so trying, and there is no one to fill it emotionally.’ (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 23 December 1924)


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