FORSTER, EDWARD MORGAN ), British novelist, was educated at Tonbridge School and King's college, Cambridge. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) was followed by The Longest Journey (1907) and A Room with a View (1908). Wider attention was won by Howards End (I 910), but thereafter, except for some short stories, The Celes tial Omnibus (191i), he published little till 1924, when A Passage to India appeared. This was a fruit of first hand observation of Indian life, and with it Forster entered into a fuller recognition of his powers as a writer. In 1927 appeared Aspects of the Novel, his first volume of criticism.
Forster deals with the interaction of two types of character, the intersection of two planes of living. In all his novels he brings into conflict those who live by convention and those who live by instinct ; those for whom property and propriety, and those for whom personal relationships, are the most important things in life. The world of convention he describes with keen observation and keen satire, and his descriptions of it abound in unforgettable touches of wisdom and humour; in the world of instinct and emotion he is really at home, and perhaps never so much as when (as in several of his short stories) he is frankly telling a fairytale. (J. SP.)