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He was born in London, the son of an architect. He was to have been named Henry, but was baptised Edward by accident. He attended Tonbridge School in Kent. At King's College, Cambridge in 1901, he became involved with a group known as the Cambridge Conversazione Society (aka The Cambridge Apostles). Many of its members went on to form the Bloomsbury group, of which Forster was also a member. Forster also belonged to an informal group of gay intellectuals which included Siegfried Sassoon and J. R. Ackerley. He travelled in Egypt, GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east and IndiaThe Republic of India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, and is the world's second-fastest growing economy. with classicist G.L. DickinsonGoldworthy Lowes Dickinson ( 1862- 1932) was an English historian and political activist. He led most of his life at Cambridge, where he did a dissertation on neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. A homosexual, he was an intimate of E. Forster and may ha in 1914. He died in CoventryFor alternative meanings see: Coventry (disambiguation Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. With a population of 304,746 (2002 estimate), Coventry is the ninth largest city in England. General information Coventry h.
Many of his novels have been filmed by Ismail Merchant and James IvoryMerchant-Ivory is a film company best known for its period costume dramas. The core members of the production team are James Ivory ( director), Ismail Merchant ( producer), and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala ( screenwriter). Filmography (incomplete) A Room with a V.
Forster's views as a secular humanistSecular humanism is a branch of humanism grounded in secularism, which attempts to avoid the dogmatic aspects of traditional religious cultures. Secular humanists may be atheists who reject all supernaturalism, or simply anti-dogmatists who see existing l are at the heart of his work, which often features characters attempting to understand each other ('only connect...', in the words of Forster's famous epigraph to Howards End) across social barriers. In Howard's End, for example, the central relationship, unacceptable to some of Forster's contemporary readers, is between working-class Leonard Bast and upper-middle-class Helen Schlegel.
In A Passage to India, the main barrier is one of race, a triangle of mistrust between the British and their Muslim and Hindu subjects. A young Indian Dr Aziz is falsely accused of raping a white British girl, Adela Quested. Although he is finally acquitted, the incident convinces him of the impossibility of friendship between Indians and the British, and damages his friendship with Fielding, a liberal-minded Englishman. Forster's goal seems to be to show that all humans are of one race, that the barriers between them are artificial, but also, pessimistically, that even if we can 'connect' emotionally, our relationships are often doomed to fail because of social pressure. Finally, in Maurice (see below), Forster addressed the subject of homosexual love.