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Photo of E.M. Forster

E.M. Forster

Writer, Additional Credits
Born January 1, 1879Died June 7, 1970 (91 years)
Edward Morgan Forster OM CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, as well as biographies and pageant plays. His short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) is often viewed as the beginning of technological dystopian fiction. He also co-authored the libretto to Benjamin Britten's opera Billy Budd (1951). Many of his novels examine class differences and hypocrisy. His views as a humanist are at the heart of his work.

Considered one of the most successful of the Edwardian era English novelists, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 22 separate years.[1][2] He declined a knighthood in 1949, though he received the Order of Merit upon his 90th birthday.[3] Forster was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1953, and in 1961 he was one of the first five authors named as a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

After attending Tonbridge School, Forster studied history and classics at King's College, Cambridge, where he met fellow future writers such as Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf. He then travelled throughout Europe before publishing his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, in 1905. The last of his novels to be published, Maurice, is a tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England. While completed in 1914, the novel was not published until 1971, the year after his death.

Many of his novels were posthumously adapted for cinema, including Merchant Ivory Productions of A Room with a View (1985), Maurice (1987) and Howards End (1992), critically acclaimed period dramas which featured lavish sets and esteemed British actors, including Helena Bonham Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis, Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Director David Lean filmed another well-received adaptation, A Passage to India, in 1984.

Known For

  • Howards End
  • A Room with a View
  • A Passage to India
  • Maurice
  • Howards End
  • A Diary for Timothy
  • A Room with a View
  • Where Angels Fear to Tread
  • Out of the Unknown
  • Billy Budd

E.M. Forster Filmography

2017
Howards End (TV Series) · as Novel
2007
A Room with a View · as Novel
1992
Howards End · as Novel
1991
1987
Maurice · as Novel
1985
A Room with a View · as Novel
1984
A Passage to India · as Novel
1965
Play of the Month (TV Series) · as Novel
1965
Out of the Unknown (TV Series)
1955
ITV Play of the Week (TV Series) · as Novel
1945

2019
E. M. Forster: His Longest Journey · as Self (archive Footage)
2007
1978
1954
Camera Three (TV Series) · as Self

2016
4 Days in France · as Verse: Vers & Fragments
2010
Billy Budd · as Libretto
1964
NET Playhouse (TV Series) · as Based On The Novels By
1954
Camera Three (TV Series) · as Story By

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