'I gave her E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India". She- "I'm not sure, but I believe I've read it. I don't really remember." Rest of conversation not recorded, above remarks noted an hour later.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 29 October 1905:
'The taupe sent his book to me last week. It is really extraordinary that it is as amusing as it is. It is a queer kind of twilight humour don't you think [...] What enraged me in the book was the tragedy. If it is supposed to [italics]be[end italics] a tragedy it's absolutely hopeless; if it's supposed to be amusing, it simply fails.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 7 July 1907:
'My brother sent me The Longest Journey. Don't you think it is an astonishing & irritating production? What a success he will be! For people will think it all so clever. I thought on every other page that he was really going to bring something off, but it all fades away into dim humour & the dimmer ghosts of unrealities. It might have been so magnificent & is a mere formless meandering. The fact is I don't think he knows what reality is, & as for experience the poor man does not realize that practically it does not exist. Still his mind interests me, its curious way of touching on things in the rather precise & charming way in which his hands (I remember) used to touch things vaguely.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 25 November 1908:
'I have been reading Forster's last book [A Room with a View] & as last year, at about the same time, it has just stirred the fringe of my brain [goes on to describe having recently had to view, in official capacity, the body of a murdered native woman] [...] I had no idea before that the smell of a decomposing human being is so infinitely fouler than anything else. Is that reality according to Forster? I believe last year I thought that he thought it is. But this book which appears to me really rather good & sometimes thoroughly amusing is absolutely muddled, isn't it?'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Leonard Woolf Print: Book
'[George Macaulay] Trevelyan wrote to Leonard Woolf (December 1905 [...]) "I wonder whether you will have seen E. M. Forster's novel 'Where Angels Fear to Tread': it is worth reading, but some people like it a great deal, others, like myself, only rather."'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay Trevelyan
E. M. Forster to Syed Ross Masood, 2 July 1909:
'Something exciting is coming on [...] The Minister for Foreign Affairs has read the works of your humble servant, has approved of them, & has asked me to dinner in consequence [...] I am looking forward to it, and am not in a funk, for Grey is not only charming, but simple, I hear: I do know his brother & sister a little.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sir Edward Grey Print: Unknown
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915:
'You can scarcely imagine the loneliness of such an effort as this [Forster's novel of homosexual love, Maurice] -- a year's work! [...] Carpenter has read and liked it, but he's too unliterary to be helpful [...] Roger Fry & Sydney [Waterlow] have also read the book, and their opinions, being totally unbiased, are interesting. R. agrees with you that it is beautiful and the best work I have done. S. finds it moving, and persuasive to all but bigots, admirable as a sociological tract, full of good things, but he finds the characters weighed down by these'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Carpenter Manuscript: Unknown
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915:
'You can scarcely imagine the loneliness of such an effort as this [Forster's novel of homosexual love, Maurice] -- a year's work! [...] Carpenter has read and liked it, but he's too unliterary to be helpful [...] Roger Fry & Sydney [Waterlow] have also read the book, and their opinions, being totally unbiased, are interesting. R. agrees with you that it is beautiful and the best work I have done. S. finds it moving, and persuasive to all but bigots, admirable as a sociological tract, full of good things, but he finds the characters weighed down by these'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Roger Fry Manuscript: Unknown
E. M. Forster to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915:
'You can scarcely imagine the loneliness of such an effort as this [Forster's novel of homosexual love, Maurice] -- a year's work! [...] Carpenter has read and liked it, but he's too unliterary to be helpful [...] Roger Fry & Sydney [Waterlow] have also read the book, and their opinions, being totally unbiased, are interesting. R. agrees with you that it is beautiful and the best work I have done. S. finds it moving, and persuasive to all but bigots, admirable as a sociological tract, full of good things, but he finds the characters weighed down by these'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Waterlow Manuscript: Unknown
'Peace has been lost on the earth and only lives outside it, in places where my imagination has not been trained to follow [...] [literature] has committed itself too deeply to the worship of vegetation.
'Re-reading my old short stories have [sic] forced the above into my mind. It was much easier to write when I believed that Wessex was waiting to return, and for the new belief I haven't been properly trained.'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster
