An essential companion to A Passage to India, a collection of the author’s own letters that read like “a close personal friend has shared his impressions” (Kirkus Reviews). In 1912, a young E. M. Forster traveled to India to serve as a secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas, a small Indian state. He was elevated to the rank of a minor noble, and eventually given the state’s highest honor, the Tukoji Rao III gold medal. This brief episode in Forster’s life became the basis for his masterwork, A Passage to India. In the letters included in The Hill of Devi, he shares his personal journey of discovering his beloved India for the first time. Forster paints a vivid, intimate picture of Dewas State—a strange, bewildering, and enchanting slice of pre-independence India. In this collection, Forster shares insight into the lives of Indian royalty and accounts of the stark contrast between their excesses and the poverty he encounters. From letters that set the scene for Forster’s lifelong friendship with the Maharaja, to an essay on the Maharaja himself and Forster’s experiences as the Maharaja’s personal secretary, The Hill of Devi is a fascinating chronicle of the author’s experience in the land he called “the oddest corner of the world outside Alice in Wonderland.”

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.

Based on exclusive access to E. M. Forster's previously restricted diaries this scrupulously researched and sensitively written biography is the first to put the fact that he was homosexual back at the heart of his story.

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Originally published in 1975, E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice draws on information about the life and works of E. M. Forster that came to light following his death in 1970. Exploring in particular the publication of Maurice in 1971, The Life to Come in 1972, and the Forster papers in King's College Library, Cambridge, this volume is an extensive study of E. M. Forster. It provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of Forster's work, his intellectual and literary background, his personality, and the reception of his work. E. M. Forster: The Personal Voice places Forster's works in their social and cultural context and provides an excellent insight into his development as a writer.