A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life Of E. M. Forster

A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life Of E. M. Forster

Product Description A REVELATORY LOOK AT THE INTIMATE LIFE OF THE GREAT AUTHOR??AND HOW IT SHAPED HIS MOST BE LOVED WORKS With the posthumous publication of his long-suppressed novel Maurice in 1970, E. M. Forster came out as a homosexual?? though that revelation made barely a ripple in his literary reputation. As Wendy Moffat persuasively argues in A Great Unrecorded History, Forster??s homosexuality was the central fact of his life. Between Wilde??s imprisonment and the Stonewall riots, Forster led a long, strange, and imaginative life as a gay man. He preserved a vast archive of his private life??a history of gay experience he believed would find its audience in a happier time. A Great Unrecorded History is a biography of the heart. Moffat??s decade of detective work??including first-time interviews with Forster??s friends??has resulted in the first book to integrate Forster??s public and private lives. From Booklist *Starred Review* It will come as no surprise to readers of literary fiction that E. M. Forster (18791970), author of such classic novels as Howards End (1910) and Passage to India (1924), was gay. His sexual orientation has been noted since the 1970 publication of his posthumous novel, Maurice, which was about love and sex between men. But Moffat places, more firmly than has been done by previous biographers, Forsters homosexuality at the core of his being, both as the lodestar by which he lived his life and as a source of intense frustration because of social prohibition against depicting it in fiction. He realized early on his attraction to his own gender, and we are given, with no hint of salaciousness, an honest account of his sex life over the years. At once powerful and sensitive, Moffats irresistibly compelling and responsible biography sees an unimpressive physical persona whose shyness reduced him to disappearing into the woodwork. And his long public silencesilent in that he published no more novels while he lived, after Passage to Indiacan be attributed to his having grown tired of the masquerade of propriety. Forster may have been regarded as mousy, but this treatment of his life is undeniably robust. In fact, it shines with the beauty its subject was made sad that he did not possess. --Brad Hooper Review [A Great Unrecorded History is] a well-written, intelligent and perceptive biography . . . [Moffat] uses the sources for our knowledge of Forsters sexuality, including letters and diaries, without reducing the mystery and sheer individuality of Forster, without making his sexuality explain everything. Colm Tibn, The New York Times Book Review None of [Forsters] biographers have had either the will or the wherewithal to concentrate as closely on Forsters sexuality as Wendy Moffat . . . In A Great Unrecorded History, she offers an insightful, revelatory portrait of a man who deeply resented having to hide such an important side of himself . . . Ms. Moffats overarching interests are in tracing Forsters attitudes about sex and hypocrisy and in placing this increasingly outspoken figure within the context of his changing times. Janet Maslin, The New York Times Wendy Moffats reexamination of E. M. Forster identifies his homosexuality as the essence of his creative life. Using unpublished writings, she charts his gradual awakening to the moral, intellectual, and emotional significance of his homoerotic imagination. Her book is an astute and original new portrait of this major novelist. Michael Holroyd, author of A Strange Eventful History A Great Unrecorded History explores the intimate life of E. M. Forster with sensitivity and scholarship. Wendy Moffat writes with profound insight about a great writer who believed in the vital significance of personal connection while being unable to openly express his sexual feelings for the men he desired. She also gives us an illuminating picture of gay sexual culture in the first half of the twentieth centur