Cambridge Authors

In January 1905 he was thinking about ghost stories, having started to write one. In a letter to Leonard Woolf he described how in this story 'a finger promenades by itself, tip to root, caterpillar fashion, over the carpet’. Something wasn’t working, however, and Forster concluded that 'it does require a mind of extraordinary frivolity to frighten people, and I’m rather pleased to find that I can’t do it’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 1 January 1905)

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)

In December 1912 he was thinking about entourages. He described to his mother, in a letter sent from India, the elaborate preparations made for the Maharajah’s excursions: 'opera glasses, cigarettes, betel nut, umbrella, stick, and State sword, together with a bundle, which I suppose contains food’. The Maharajah had expressed enthusiasm for a visit to England, but Forster deemed this unlikely, since his Private Secretary ;thought that 60 or 70 servants was the least [he] could travel with. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 16 December 1912)

In December 1914 he was thinking about being attractive to women. He wrote to Syed Ross Masood, a former pupil he fell in love with, and related the 'awkward and surprising’ news that 'a young lady has fallen in love with me’. Forster wished she would stop, 'as she is very nice, and I enjoyed being friends’. The situation caused him to reflect on this 'ill constructed world’: 'Love is always being given where it is not required.’ (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 5 December 1914)

In December 1916 he was thinking about John Keats. In a letter to Malcolm Darling he wondered 'what shall I talk about?’, and decided on Keats. 'How slightly I esteem him! As a poet, not a man.’ The big problem, as Forster saw it, was that 'with Keats sex chanced to be unaesthetic’. He accused Keats of 'shoddy sensuousness’, and 'fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched’. He did say that Keats might have turned out to be a major poet, had he not died so young. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 1 December 1916)

In November 1898 he was thinking about pomp and ceremony. He wrote home from Cambridge to his mother about events at the University’s Senate House. Lord Kitchener, commander-in-chief of the army in Egypt, was in town to receive an honorary degree. The crowd was so avid that a large section of fence collapsed: 'It is a very great miracle that no one was killed.’ The celebrations – including a vast bonfire in the Market square – were huge. Forster couldn’t take it all seriously, and he noted that Kitchener’s combination of academic robes and military uniform 'looked very ridiculous’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 24 November 1898)

In November 1910 he was thinking about success. In a letter to Syed Ross Masood, a former pupil he fell in love with, he passed on the news that Howard’s End was 'selling so well that I shall probably make enough money by it to come to India’. Editions in America and Canada, and a French translation, were to follow. Forster was wary of seeming boastful: 'I do not tell most people this because they would think I was bragging, but I know that you will understand, and feel what I feel.’ (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 21 November 1910)

In November 1915 he was thinking about D.H. Lawrence, and censorship. He wrote urgently to Henry John Newbolt, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, with the news that The Rainbow had been 'confiscated by the authorities’. He hoped that Newbolt might join the debate against censorship, because 'the right to literary expression is as great in war as it was ever in peace’. He added a postscript: 'You’ll probably dislike The Rainbow – I make no appeal on that ground. But it represents over a year’s hard and sincere work, I know.’ (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 7 November 1915)

In November 1914 he was thinking about the First World War, then in its first months. In a letter to his friend Malcolm Darling, he expressed a resigned opinion that 'we could not have kept out of this war’. He also related a change of opinion. Formerly, 'I did think that we should send no men to France, but support our Allies by the Navy only’. Now, the need to engage more aggressively was more compelling. However, Forster maintained that 'stalemate’ was the probable outcome, and that European civilization would take a long time to recover 'whichever side wins’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 6 November 1914)

In October 1938 he was thinking about Communism. He wrote to the poet Cecil Day-Lewis about the troubling political situation in Europe. Having spoken up for Communism before, Forster now noted that he had 'disillusionments which don’t altogether proceed from my own weakness’. In particular, 'Russia, perhaps through no fault of her own, seems to be going in the wrong direction; too much uniformity and too much bloodshed’. He held out some hope for the future: after what he called 'the next European catastrophe’, perhaps Communism might 'do better’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 30 October 1938)