The Suburban Novels

Abstract

By 1894, when Morgan Forster was fifteen, Rooksnest, the house near Stevenage, Hertfordshire, had become his Arcadia, cherished in memory but unattainable. In 1894, when he began a detailed description of the house in order to fix it firmly in mind, he could not remember the act of first entering the house, but he was clear about his first memory connected with his being in and of Rooksnest: ‘playing with bricks on the drawing room floor’. They had arrived in March 1883 and intended to stay for no more than three years. They left in 1893 because the landlord would not renew their lease, in part because Mrs Forster could not make up her mind about it. In those ten years her son developed his lifelong attachment to the house, its wych-elm and meadow, and the farm beyond.