The Originality of E. M. Forster

Abstract

Although his novels superficially resemble Victorian novels, it is not too much to say that E. M. Forster permanently changed the English novel. Perhaps his not having written novels for the last four decades of his life has inhibited our recognition of the seminal role Forster played in the transformation of the Victorian novel into what we know as the Modern novel. For example, Lionel Stevenson¹ barely mentions E. M. Forster’s contribution, and Walter Allen asserts that Forster cannot ‘be regarded as a pioneer’ and places him ‘in the older English tradition which, beginning with Fielding, ends, we normally assume, with Meredith’.² In this chapter, I shall make rather more substantial claims for Forster’s originality as an artist than are usually made.