The Creator as Critic and Other Writings by E.M. ForsterJeffrey M. Heath E.M. Forster, whose novels A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India probe the values of the English middle class, is recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished authors. He was also a highly respected literary critic. The Creator as Critic contains more than 40 of Forster’s hitherto-unpublished essays, lectures, and memoirs, spanning the period 1898 to 1960. They reflect his views on a wide range of authors: Coleridge, Tolstoy, Pater, Wilde, James, Hardy, Butler, Housman, Kipling, Joyce, Lawrence, Proust, Cavafy, and others. The Creator as Critic also presents the original texts of some 30 broadcasts made by Forster for the BBC between 1928 and 1959. These radio talks, collected for the first time in this volume, are the thoughtful and thought-provoking products of Forster’s active engagement with the literary, political, and social events of his time. |
Contents
Preface | 9 |
Explanatory Note | 19 |
The Poems of Kipling | 26 |
A Roman Society | 41 |
Walter Pater | 50 |
English Literature since the War | 56 |
The Creator as Critic | 64 |
Three Generations | 99 |
A Conversation in the Train | 227 |
The Future of Broadcasting Strachey Capek and Others | 236 |
Efficiency and Liberty | 244 |
Books of 1939 | 250 |
Dos Passos Steinbeck and Others | 258 |
Story by Five Authors | 264 |
Islam Today Lord David Cecil on Thomas Hardy | 270 |
A Book that Influenced Me | 278 |
A Surrey Ramble Part I | 108 |
Modern Writing | 120 |
The Last Moment of Life | 130 |
The Relation of Dryden to Milton and Pope | 139 |
The Novelists of the Eighteenth Century and Their Influence | 150 |
Loch Meikle | 187 |
Swimming in the Sea | 197 |
Points de repère | 204 |
Death ofa Clock | 211 |
Railway Bridges | 219 |
Moon Weston Anand Orwell and Others | 284 |
Edward Carpenter | 290 |
Key to Abbreviations | 319 |
Introduction | 529 |
Introduction | 626 |
Poems | 724 |
Pater Novalis Forster | 742 |
The Whole Truth | 756 |
775 | |