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Maurice
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Product Description
Product Description
Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Through Clive, whom he encounters at Cambridge, and through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive's country estate, Maurice gradually experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening. A tale of passion, bravery and defiance, this intensely personal novel was completed in 1914 but remained unpublished until after Forster's death in 1970. Compellingly honest and beautifully written, it offers a powerful condemnation of the repressive attitudes of British society, and is at once a moving love story and an intimate tale of one man's erotic and political self-discovery.
About the Author
Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) wrote six novels - Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), A Passage to India (1924). Maurice , written in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories; two collections of essays; a critical work (Aspects of the Novel); The Hill of Devi; two biographies; two books about Alexandria; and the libretto for Britten's opera Billy Budd.
David Leavitt is the author of several novels and story collections, most recently The Body of Jonah Boyd (2004). With Mark Mitchell, he edited the Penguin US edition of E.M. Forster's Selected Stories, as well as The New Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he is Professor of English at the University of Florida.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Once a term the whole school went for a walk - that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Once a term the whole school went for a walk - that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Maurice" by E.M. Forster is one of my favourite novels. It is so simply and beautifully written and tells a story that all readers will able to relate to in one way or another. A tragic reflection of Forster's own life of closeted homosexuality - the novel itself was written in 1914 when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain and remained unpublished until 1970 - the novel tells the story of Maurice Hall, a young man trying to come to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Edwardian England where his "sort" are arrested for such "crimes". However, when he meets Clive, a fellow student at Cambridge, he realises that he is not alone in his predicament after all. As the events of the story unfold, things become deeply sad as Maurice suffers more and more because of a secret that he feels he cannot tell any of his family and friends. The heartwarming ending - which Forster must have hoped for himself as well - is ultimately uplifting and allows the reader to envisage what the future will be like for Maurice themselves.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Maurice is not among the pioneering works of gay literature in that, though written before World War I, it was only published in 1970, after Forster's death, so it did not carve out a new territory of freedom for gay men. Forster himself said that the book was, by the close of his life, dated. And so it is in that it portrays a society that is long gone. But the emotional torment of Maurice as he struggles, in real pain, with his sexuality still strikes a chord, as does the brilliant portrayal of Maurice's inner conviction that everything that is wrong with him is also everything that is right for him as well.
Forster's prose is taut and understated, full of striking images and strong on irony. He also, perceptively for the time when he was writing, portrays a society on the verge of being swept away. Penge, the grand but delapidated country house of Maurice's friend Clive, is a symbol of a crumbling class system. The uneasy relationship between Maurice and Alec Scudder, when they are in the position of master and servant, rather than equals as lovers, perfectly describes the ambiguity and injustice of a deeply unfair social order. Maurice remains a remarkable book in its own right, as well as a poignant insight into the inner turmoil of Forster's own life in an age when to be gay was a crime and a sickness. The love between Alec and Maurice can only be consummated in secret. Society is governed by hypocrisy. This is a fascinating and moving glimpse of a world which, praise be, has gone forever.
Forster's prose is taut and understated, full of striking images and strong on irony. He also, perceptively for the time when he was writing, portrays a society on the verge of being swept away. Penge, the grand but delapidated country house of Maurice's friend Clive, is a symbol of a crumbling class system. The uneasy relationship between Maurice and Alec Scudder, when they are in the position of master and servant, rather than equals as lovers, perfectly describes the ambiguity and injustice of a deeply unfair social order. Maurice remains a remarkable book in its own right, as well as a poignant insight into the inner turmoil of Forster's own life in an age when to be gay was a crime and a sickness. The love between Alec and Maurice can only be consummated in secret. Society is governed by hypocrisy. This is a fascinating and moving glimpse of a world which, praise be, has gone forever.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
E M Forster's "Maurice" is a classic of the gay novel but regardless of being a classic it still remains an interesting and engaging work of literature. However, we had to wait almost thirty years for a critical edition but the book seems to have been destined for delays from the moment it was conceived. Although the writer completed the first draft in just a few months by 1913, it took him another 46 years of correcting and amending the text before he decided to leave it alone for another decade in a folder marked "Publishable, but is it worth it?". The novel appeared for the first time in 1971, a year after its author's death. Rather in a hurry to get the last unknown Forster's novel, the editors apparently did not pay sufficient attention to variants of the text. Still the edition remained in print for another twenty-eight years before this corrected edition finally appeared on the market.
An average reader may find this volume a bit too much to handle - over fifty pages of detailed introduction and almost a hundred pages of textual notes. Still the text of the novel is worth the money (just as the introduction) even if the extended notes (the editors apparently decided against publishing a separate volume of "Manuscripts" as they did in case of "A Passage to India" and two other novels) are addressed only to few specialists.
A perfect gift for anybody interested in history of gay literature or Forster. Even if they already have a copy of "Maurice" this is so much more than another reprint they will be happy to have it.
An average reader may find this volume a bit too much to handle - over fifty pages of detailed introduction and almost a hundred pages of textual notes. Still the text of the novel is worth the money (just as the introduction) even if the extended notes (the editors apparently decided against publishing a separate volume of "Manuscripts" as they did in case of "A Passage to India" and two other novels) are addressed only to few specialists.
A perfect gift for anybody interested in history of gay literature or Forster. Even if they already have a copy of "Maurice" this is so much more than another reprint they will be happy to have it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Maurice
Read by James Wilby - who played de title role in the film - is of course my best.
Here en there how he reads the texts sounds quite different - interpretation, so to say -... Read more
Here en there how he reads the texts sounds quite different - interpretation, so to say -... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Rf Heemskerk
Moving and memorable
Maurice follows this privileged young man from public school, through Cambridge and on into his mid twenties; and the two men with whom he becomes intimately involved. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Benjamin
Forster's triumph
Forster's works include Room with a view and passage to India however Maurice is truly his greatest and most beautiful work of literature. Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2010 by fish and chips
Publish and be damned?
This edition benefits from an excellent introduction which provides a very useful addition to the critical debate surrounding this posthumously published novel. Read more
Published on 22 Mar 2010 by Room For A View
Coming out - or staying in?
I find 'Maurice' a unique work of Forster's; possibly -
even probably - his best written work and a wonderful
vindication of homosexual love. Read more
even probably - his best written work and a wonderful
vindication of homosexual love. Read more
Published on 22 Jun 2009 by Peter S. Kinnison
A touching tale of human emotion.
Prior to reading Forster's novel, I had effectively written him off as misogynistic critic, bitter about society's treatment of homosexuality. Read more
Published on 11 May 2009 by M. Barr
A miniature masterpiece
In an era of politeness and rigid class, Maurice - our hopelessly clumsy and dim hero - discovers his emerging sexual proclivities unsettle the pleasantries of his daily life, from... Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2009 by Daniel Park
Wonderfully evocative
EM Forster's tale of forbidden love in the stuffy upper-crust world of interwar Britain deserves a wider readership. Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2008 by Hombre M
Forster's Heart
This novel, whilst by no means the greatest of Foster's, does however strike at the heart of the values and ideals his works espoused. Read more
Published on 18 Jun 2008 by Mike Cormack
All I hoped for!
While watching the film at the age of 13 I realised I was definately gay. I eventually decided to read the book, while it couldn't make me gay it made me enjoy Forster's brilliant... Read more
Published on 26 May 2008 by Philip Thompson
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