The Man and His Work

Abstract

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. His mother, Lily Winchelo, was a young woman of intelligence and character, who had been befriended by a well-to-do spinster connected with a famous group of philanthropic Evangelical Christians called ‘The Clapham Sect’. His father, the nephew of Lily’s benefactress, died soon after his son was born. After living with various friends, Forster’s mother took him to live in a house called ‘Rooksnest’ in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. The description of ‘Howards End’ in the first chapter of the novel is closely based on ‘Rooksnest’. It, too, had a meadow, a vine and a wych-elm into the bark of which were stuck ‘three or four fangs’, according to Forster’s later account. Forster was a precocious and imaginative child, closely attached to his lively mother. Apart from a succession of garden boys, who were his childhood playmates, he grew up in a household of women.