The book is about two families in England at the beginning of the twentieth century: the Wilcoxes, who are rich capitalists with a fortune made in the Colonies, and the half-German Schlegel sisters (Margaret and Helen), who have a lot in common with the real-life Bloomsbury Group. Instead, he turned to essays – which are well worth reading. This was because he no longer felt he could write about the subject of heterosexual love which he did not know or feel. His novels grew in complexity and depth, until he eventually gave up fiction in 1923. He was also a member of The Bloomsbury Group. These included the concept of ‘tea-tabling’ – making the substance of serious fiction the ordinary events of everyday life. He was a friend of Virginia Woolf, with whom he worked out some of the ground rules of literary modernism. He documents the Edwardian and Georgian periods in a witty and elegant prose, satirising the middle and upper classes he knew so well. Forster is a bridge between the nineteenth and the twentieth century novel. The outcome is a mixture of tragedy and resignation, leavened by hope for the future in the young and free-spirited.Į.M. Following on their social coat tails is a working-class would-be intellectual who is caught between two conflicting worlds. A marriage between the two leads to spiritual rivalry over the possession of property.

Two families are contrasted: the intellectual and cultivated Schlegels, and the capitalist Wilcoxes.

Howards End, (1910) is what’s called a ‘a State of England’ novel, and is possibly Forster’s greatest work – though that’s just my opinion. Tutorial, video, study resources, further reading

Howards end penguin