A Great Unrecorded History A New Life of E. M. Forster

A REVELATORY LOOK AT THE INTIMATE LIFE OF THE GREAT AUTHORAND HOW IT SHAPED HIS MOST BE LOVED WORKS With the posthumous publication of his long-suppressed novelMauricein 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 inA 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 lifea history of gay experience he believed would find its audience in ahappiertime. A Great Unrecorded Historyis a biography of the heart. Moffat's decade of detective workincluding first-time interviews with Forster's friendshas 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 viewrevealing his astuteness as a social critic, his political bravery, and his prophetic vision of gay intimacy.A Great Unrecorded Historyinvites us to see Forster and modern gay historyfrom a completely new angle.

WENDY MOFFAT is a professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A Great Unrecorded History is her first book.