What Was Forster Thinking About This Week?
E.M. Forster's letters range across numerous subjects - his day-to-day experiences and attitudes, the books he wrote and read, the times he lived in. By sifting through these, undergraduate Colette Sensier and the Cambridge Authors team have put together an unusual virtual diary of what was on Forster's mind at different times of the year. On this page you'll find what he was thinking this week; and this will change regularly. If you wish, you can receive these updates, approximately once a week, by e-mail. Just enter your email address in the box below to receive your own 'Forster's Thought for the Week'. A great variety of thought-provoking material will come through - sometimes sad, sometimes serious, sometimes quirky and even a little objectionable. Do you see things the same way he did?
WHAT WAS FORSTER THINKING ABOUT THIS WEEK?
In July 1929 he was thinking about diamonds. In a letter to his mother from Kimberley, South Africa, he wrote about a visit – a most vulgar and interesting day’ – to the diamond mines. He deemed it in some ways 'most impressive to see the whole countryside turned upside down for the sake of diamonds’, and conveyed vivid scenes of 'barbed wire everywhere, black convicts working, police, rubbish heaps like mountains, holes in the ground 3000 feet deep’. In the end the experience was a negative one ('It is the most imbecile industry in the world, I suppose’) and he concluded that 'I don’t think I shall now ever give you or any body a diamond bracelet’. (Source: Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, ed. Mary Lago and P.N. Furbank (London: Collins, 1983-1985), letter of 29 July 1929)
