Maurice

1 About this book

Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays through university and beyond. It was written in 1913–1914 and revised in 1932 as well as 1952–1960 (each version differs in the novel's last part). Forster was an admirer of the poet, philosopher, socialist, and early gay rights activist Edward Carpenter and, following a visit to Carpenter's home at Millthorpe, Derbyshire in 1913, was inspired to write Maurice. The cross-class relationship between Carpenter and his working-class partner, George Merrill, presented a real-life model for that of Maurice and Alec Scudder.

Although Forster showed different versions of the novel to a select few of his trusted friends (among them Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey, Edward Carpenter, Christopher Isherwood, Xiao Qian, and Forrest Reid) throughout the decades, it was published only posthumously in 1971.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Good for readers who want: a coming-of-age story and a classic.

• Coming of age
• Classics
• Romance
• Historical fiction
• Gay men
• England in fiction
• University of Cambridge
• Homosexuality