Twenty-First-Century Readings of E. M. Forster's 'Maurice'

This is the first book-length study of Forster’sposthumously-published novel. Nine essays focus exclusively on Maurice and its dynamic afterlives inliterature, film and new media during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Begun in 1913 and revised over almost fifty years, Maurice became adefining text in Forster’s work and a canonical example of queer fiction. Yetthe critical tendency to read Maurice primarily as a ‘revelation’ ofForster’s homosexuality has obscured important biographical, political and aestheticcontexts for this novel. This collection places Maurice among early twentieth-centurydebates about politics, philosophy, religion, gender, Aestheticism and allegory.Essays explore how the novel interacts with literary predecessors andcontemporaries including John Bunyan, Oscar Wilde, Havelock Ellis and EdwardCarpenter, and how it was shaped by personal relationships such as Forster’sfriendship with Florence Barger. They close-read the textual variants ofForster’s manuscripts and examine the novel’s genesis and revisions. They considerthe volatility of its reception, analysing how it galvanizes subsequentgenerations of writers and artists including Christopher Isherwood, AlanHollinghurst, Damon Galgut, James Ivory and twenty-first-century onlinefanfiction writers. What emerges from the volume is the complexity of thenovel, as a text and as a cultural phenomenon.

Reviews'Twenty-First-Century Readings of E.M. Forster's Maurice is a smart and wide-ranging collection of essays on a critically neglected novel whose time is very much now. Exploring the novel’s queer politics, historical contexts, and aesthetic afterlives, the contributors elevate it in the Forster canon and establish its vital relevance to contemporary LGBT life.'Benjamin Bateman, University of Edinburgh, 'I would absolutely recommend the book. Twenty-First-Century Readings not only encapsulates and expands the present state of research concerning Maurice but above all, it invites and creates space for further Maurice related discussions... A real treat for the fans of Maurice and its author.'Anna Kwiatkowska, Polish Journal of English Studies, 'The scholarly ambition and intellectual range of the essays collected in Emma Sutton and Tsung-Han Tsai’s new volume suggest that scholarly work on E.M. Forster retains a pleasing energy and vibrancy in the author’s anniversary year... a deeply satisfying collection... It will undoubtedly send readers to the greenwood afresh, copies of Maurice in hand.'Fraser Riddell, Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw

Emma Sutton is Professor of English at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Tsung-Han Tsai is an independent scholar.