Birth of E.M. FORSTER (d: 1970) Edward Morgan Forster, OM, was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.  Forster’s humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: “Only connect”.  Forster was homosexual, but this fact was not widely made public during his lifetime.

His posthumously-published novel Maurice tells of the coming of age of an explicitly homosexual male character. It was  made into a lovely film starring James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves, with a ravishing final scene. This writer swoons every time.