| A Great Unrecorded History: A New Life of E. M. Forster |  | Author: Wendy Moffat
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $32.50
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 37,778
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0374166781
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780374166786
ASIN: 0374166781
Publication Date: May 11, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
A REVELATORY LOOK AT THE INTIMATE LIFE OF THE GREAT AUTHOR—AND HOW IT SHAPED HIS MOST BE LOVED WORKS
With the posthumous publication of his long-suppressed novel Maurice in 1970, E. M. Forster came out as a homosexual— though that revelation made barely a ripple in his literary reputation. As Wendy Moffat persuasively argues in A Great Unrecorded History, Forster’s homosexuality was the central fact of his life. Between Wilde’s imprisonment and the Stonewall riots, Forster led a long, strange, and imaginative life as a gay man. He preserved a vast archive of his private life—a history of gay experience he believed would find its audience in a happier time.
A Great Unrecorded History is a biography of the heart. Moffat’s decade of detective work—including first-time interviews with Forster’s friends—has resulted in the first book to integrate Forster’s public and private lives. Seeing his life through the lens of his sexuality offers us a radically new view—revealing his astuteness as a social critic, his political bravery, and his prophetic vision of gay intimacy. A Great Unrecorded History invites us to see Forster— and modern gay history—from a completely new angle.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
 Sexuality as Lens for Considering Forster's Life & Work September 5, 2010
Richard A. Jenkins (Washington, DC USA)
Moffat opens this biography by arguing that Forster felt his life could only be viewed from the perspective of his sexuality. This sets the stage for a book that explores Forster's life from multiple perspectives of his gay experience. Sex and Forster's lovers make up only a small part of this narrative. It becomes clear that coming to terms with his sexuality gave Forster access to a world of colleagues and life experiences that, otherwise, he only would have known obliquely and abstractly. The early chapters repeatedly refer to Forster's posthumous "Maurice" and how it drew from his experience and evolved as manuscript. Later chapters briefly return to the manuscript, in terms of how it brought together important colleagues in Forster's life. Moffat weaves together a variety of early and mid-20th century figures whose lives intersected with Forster's, including many important gay figures from literature and the arts. The meek, awkward Forster was, in some ways, an odd choice to be at the center of that world. He was a generation older and far more conservative than many of the men who drew him into their circles. yet, he was respected for his body of work and his humanist viewpoint.
Some aspects of Forster's life are better sketched than others, hence, 4 stars instead of 5. For example, the reader never really knows how Forster supported himself for the last 40+ years of his life, although the last couple decades apparently were quite comfortable. The attention to Forster's later years varies and his 50s, perhaps his happiest decade, pass quite quickly. The dynamics of his relationship with Bob Buckingham, and later, Buckingham's family is treated somewhat inconsistently and the middle years of the relationship are quite vague. Forster integrated Buckingham and Buckingham's wife into his social set, but the reactions of his literary friends and the Buckinghams are never really described. Forster is described as losing his empathy for women after he began to come out as a gay man, but this is not entirely convincing. He remained attentive to his mother and continued a variety of friendships with women. Under different circumstances and sexualities, the boy who never fit with other boys but finally found his peer group may have lost his need to heavily represent women in his work and his thinking. The evolution of Forster's thought, his exposure to foreign ways of thinking, and his adoption of a secular form of humanism is never fully explored or integrated. It is clear that acquired a set of ideals that were sorely tested I different spheres, particularly his romantic ideas about working class men. Finally, Moffat doesn't really explain how the Buckinghams' sexually whitewashed narrative came to be the dominant one in public descriptions of Forster in the initial years after his life.
Moffat convincingly presents a world in which the trials of Oscar Wilde silenced Forster in a way that they couldn't affect younger gay colleagues. At the same time, she notes the limitations of early relaxation of laws against homosexuality in the UK. She also notes the role of WWII and its more relaxed social codes on post-war movements for gay rights. She notes parallel, though obviously different circumstances for African-Americans, but oddly ignores the parallel for women in the US and Western Europe.
Overall, the book is a satisfying read and it has made me more interested in looking at the other writers who populated his world.
Great new insights into Forster's life August 18, 2010
Craig A. Seymour (Chicago, IL)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've always loved Forster and this is the first biography that made me feel like I had an intimate glimpse into his interior life. I highly recommend!
Craig Seymour, author of All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.
 A wonderful biography of EM Forster August 6, 2010
Robert Dawidoff (West Hollywood, CA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This fascinating, especially well written life of the great English writer E.M. Forster is splendid. Its complete account of Forster's homosexuality and its signal importance to him and the picture of gay and literary English life makes this book an original one. For the Forster devotee, it is a must. It illuminates his work subtly. For the reader who doesn't know Forster, it is a telling story of art, love and friendship and the resources and recourses of a banned sexuality. There is nothing reductive about this book. It opens the subject up. It will make you want to read Forster, which is a real pleasure.
 "Start with the fact that he was a homosexual." June 30, 2010
Karen Vincent (New Orleans, LA USA)
2 out of 14 found this review helpful
That was the title of the prologue - unfortunately, that is as far as Ms. Moffat went. This was not a biography of Forster's life as a writer or a man - it was just 300+ pages about his sex life. It was basically a "one trick pony" entry and not worth the money or the time. Surely someone who truly appreciated Forster's mastery of the novel could have done better than this.
Compelling and Depressing June 26, 2010
Barrie Murphy (Kintnersville, Pa.)
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Wendy Moffat does what she can with E.M Forster's life, a gay life that very few knew about thanks to an overly cautious author. After decades in the closet, Forster did succeed in connecting with men of different backgrounds, and there are some compelling portraits here of J.D. Ackerly and the great love of his life, Bob Buckingham. Through it all, Forster comes across as a frustrating figure, concerned with his public image right up until his death and unfortunately depriving Moffat, and the reader, of a richer subject matter.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9
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