Morgan: A Biography of E. M. Forster

by Nicola Beauman

The author provides an original view of the writer she believes to be the greatest British novelist this century. Armed with new material, she places Forster formally in the context of his work to produce a life history which is both a literary detective story and an imaginative creation of the writer's inner world. Nicola Beauman writes with insight on Forster's lifelong relationships with his mother and great-aunts, reveals the way in which Forster's major novels stemmed from his personal relationships, and in particular, suggests through use of new material, who the originals for Forster's homosexual novel "Maurice" were, and what the writing of that book cost him.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Books About Books, British Literature

404 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Nicola Beauman is a British biographer and journalist, and the founder of Persephone Books, an independent book publisher based in Bath.

Reviews

[Anne Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting, detailed study of EM Forster, I loved it. It made me feel very sad about the man, and look at his work with with new understanding. He was so clever in creating the relationships between men and women with their hopes and flaws, all the while he lacked the opportunity to have such experiences himself. The writing of his novels is closely explained and I'm now really enjoying rereading his work, starting with "Where Angels Fear To Tread".

[Avril · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the typical biography, as the title suggests. Beauman calls E. M. Forster ‘Morgan’ all the way through, rather than Forster, because this is a very personal biography. Most of the book deals with the first half of Forster’s life, when he was writing his novels. The second half of his life only gets two or three chapters. That might be partly because Forster’s later journals weren’t available when this book was written, but I suspect that it was also because Beauman was most interested in Forster’s books; she sometimes writes about her own reactions to them, which I appreciated. What I wasn’t so sure about were the times when she claims to know what Forster was thinking or feeling: he must have thought this he would have felt that. I also struggled a little with Beauman referring to Forster as an ‘invert’. I know it’s a historically accurate term, but it’s not a pleasant one.

I must say if there’s been a biography written that uses Forster’s later journals. I’d love to know more about his later, happy, years, when he was in a long term same-sex relationship.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this biography. Forster is a fascinating subject, and the author's empathy for him comes through clearly. Her merging of Forster's various texts with biographical details is not done as seamlessly as Hermione Lee did in her biography of Virginia Woolf. That and Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen remain the pinnacles of literary biography, and I hope there will be one of Forster equally well done.

[Kirsten (lush.lit.life) · Rating 2 out of 5]

E.M. Forster is an interesting subject - sad little man that he was...this bio is painfully written though. in trying to highlight overlap between his life and his novels, by quoting extensively from the novels, the author makes it difficult to sort out which is which...

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

E.M.Forster presents a challenge to any biographer. He was not an easy man to know, even when he was alive and destroyed many of his more confidential papers. Fortunately, he lived long before electronic communications and was an assiduous letter-writer. Nicola Beaumann makes heavy use of these as well as sensitive interpretation of his novels but one feels she struggles at times to penetrate the inner man. A homosexual who never really came out although he had a long relationship in later life with Bob, who was married to a woman, Morgan wrote all his novels before he obtained sexual fulfilment with another person. Beaumann speculates about the influence of this situation on his work and underlines the heavy influence of his close relationship with his mother and his attachment to homes in the English countryside. Her struggles with her subject demonstrate the difficulties of the biographer's art, particularly the biography of a literary genius: how closely can life's circumstances be linked to and 'explain' the artist's work?

[Kirti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel take on his life: one that had clearly be missing in the literature but one could argue that it dominate the book and skewed the resulting biography too much.

Nevertheless a wonderful account of the times in which he lived from 30s to 60s: a fascinating life based on the production of a handful of books!

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A biography of E. M. Forster.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me very glad to be alive now and not back then.