Alexandria: A History and a Guide

by E. M. Forster, Vincent Nicolosi

Overview

Back in Alexandria again, [Cleopatra] watched the second duel—that between Mark Antony and Caesar’s murderers. She helped neither party, and when Antony won he summoned her… She came, not in a carpet but in a gilded barge, and her life henceforward belongs less to history than to poetry… Voluptuous but watchful, she treated her new lover as she had treated her old. She never bored him, and since grossness means monotony she sharpened his mind to those more delicate delights, where sense verges into spirit. Her infinite variety lay in that. She was the last of a secluded and subtle race, she was a flower that Alexandria had taken three hundred years to produce and that eternity cannot wither. Widely regarded as “the best guidebook ever written” E.M. Forster’s ALEXANDRIA remains one of the most rare and least explored of his works—an evocative, informative exploration of that most fabled, exotic and elusive of all the world’s cities. Now for the first time ever Forster’s ALEXANDRIA appears in eBook format, and the release of the Fonthill Edition in 2012 coincides with the book’s 90th anniversary. Forster spent several of the most influential years of his life in Alexandria—that ever complex, ever-enduring, multi-faceted ancient/modern city founded by Alexander the Great more than two millennia ago. Perhaps the world’s first truly cosmopolitan city, Alexandria remains forever intriguing. More than either a History or a Guide, Forster’s ALEXANDRIA is, as Lawrence Durrell noted, an exquisite labour of love.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014965606
Publisher:	Fonthill Press LLC
Publication date:	07/17/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

One of the foremost British writers of the 20th century, E. M. Forster (1879-1970) is best known for his novels examining class differences in British society during the twilight years of Empire. The colonial experience influenced his psyche, as did the encroachment of modernity and the infiltration of urban forces upon rural England. His father died when he was an infant and Forster lived with his mother for much of his life. One of his most formative epochs was his sojourn at King’s College, Cambridge with its emphasis on classicalism, the arts and liberal studies. Here Forster’s parameters, cultural and spiritual, began to expand, and in Cambridge commenced the deeper formation and emancipation of his individuality. He was a member of the Apostles, a secret society that in later years sprouted into the Bloomsbury Group. For Forster travel engendered an element of self-becoming and, of a kind, salvation—just as wanderings and the experience of Britain’s far-flung Empire influenced so many of his countrymen; T. E. Lawrence comes to mind, and later, Sir Wilfred Thesiger. Forster’s immersion into colonial life was more fleeting and fringe-like than theirs, and in photographs he perhaps appears somewhat less accustomed in his turban than they in keffiyehs. Nevertheless, the parochialism of his upper-middle-class English culture began to fall away. Awarenesses and curiosities hitherto dormant became insistent as provincialism’s mirrors began to crumble away. His years in Egypt engendered his travel classic ALEXANDRIA: A HISTORY AND A GUIDE. On a tramline he met a young conductor, Mohammed el Adl; thus ensued a romance that, apparently, held gratifications for each. Forster’s connection with el Adl revealed and prefigured a predilection for seeking fulfilment beyond the confines of class; one could say that, for Forster, the affair was the realization of the Maurice/Scudder affair in Maurice. ALEXANDRIA is the little known exotic jewel in Forster’s oeuvre.

Date of Birth:

January 1, 1879

Date of Death:

June 7, 1970

Place of Birth:

London

Place of Death:

Coventry, England

Education:

B. A. in classics, King's College, Cambridge, 1900; B. A. in history, 1901; M.A., 1910