The Longest Journey

by E. M. Forster, Gilbert Adair (Introduction)

Overview

In this searching tragicomedy of manners, personalities, and world views, E. M. Forster explores the "idea of England" he would later develop in Howard's End. Bookish, sensitive, and given to wild enthusiasms, Rickie Elliot is virtually made for a life at Cambridge, where he can subsist on a regimen of biscuits and philosophical debate. But the love-smitten Rickie leaves his natural habitat to marry the devastatingly practical Agnes Pembroke, who brings with her — as a sort of dowry — a teaching position at the abominable Sawston School.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141441481
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/31/2006
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.14(w) x 7.78(h) x 1.01(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879, attended Tonbridge School as a day boy, and went on to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1897. With King’s he had a lifelong connection and was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 1946. He declared that his life as a whole had not been dramatic, and he was unfailingly modest about his achievements. Interviewed by the BBC on his eightieth birthday, he said: ‘I have not written as much as I’d like to . . . I write for two reasons: partly to make money and partly to win the respect of people whom I respect . . . I had better add that I am quite sure I am not a great novelist.’ Eminent critics and the general public have judged otherwise and in his obituary The Times called him ‘one of the most esteemed English novelists of his time’.

He wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howard’s End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. It won both the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Maurice, his novel on a homosexual theme, finished 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, a fascinating record of two visits Forster made to the Indian State of Dewas Senior; two biographies; two books about Alexandria (where he worked for the Red Cross in the First World War); and, with Eric Crozier, the libretto for Britten’s opera Billy Budd. He died in June 1970.

Gilbert Adair, writer, film critic, and journalist, is the author of Love and Death on Long Island, among other novels.

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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of [Forster's] works. (Lionel Trilling)

Lionel Trilling

Of Forster's five novels, The Longest Journey…is perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate.

Editorial Reviews

Perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of [Forster's] works. (Lionel Trilling)

From the Publisher

Of Forster’s five novels, The Longest Journey…is perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate.”

Lionel Trilling