The Longest Journey

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was born on January 1st, 1879 at Melcombe Place, London NW1. He was registered as Henry Morgan Forster, but was mistakenly named at his baptism as Edward Morgan Forster. Forster inherited £8,000 (a sum just shy of a million in today’s money) from his paternal great-aunt. This bequest would later enable him to become a writer. During this time he attended Tonbridge School in Kent, as a day boy. For his University days he was at King's College, Cambridge, between 1897 and 1901, and later became a peripheral member of the Bloomsbury Group in the 1910s and 1920s. After leaving university, he travelled throughout continental Europe with his mother. His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, was published in 1905 followed by The Longest Journey, in 1907. Forster's third novel is A Room with a View, published in 1908, and probably his lightest and most optimistic work although, chronologically contains his earliest writing. In 1910 Forster his success continued with Howards End. As the shadow of war began to gather over Europe In 1914, Forster visited Egypt, Germany and India. By this time the majority of his literary canon had been written. In the First World War, as a conscientious objector, Forster volunteered for the International Red Cross, and served in Alexandria, Egypt. Forster spent a second spell in India in the early 1920s as the private secretary to Tukojirao III, the Maharajah of Dewas. After returning to London from India, he completed his last novel, A Passage to India, published in 1924. It was also his greatest success. Forster was homosexual, which was openly known to his closest friends but not to the public and a lifelong bachelor. He developed a long-term, loving relationship with Bob Buckingham, a married policeman. Edward Morgan Forster died of a stroke on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91 in Coventry. His sixth novel, Maurice, was published posthumously in 1971. It is a homosexual love story which also returns to the familiar territory of Forster's earlier novels.