Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 18797 June 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and
librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's
humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the
epigraph to his 1910 novel
Howards End: "Only connect ... ". His 1908 novel,
A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while
A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 13 different years.