![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() A note found on the manuscript read: "Publishable, but worth it?" Forster was determined that his novel should have a happy ending, but also feared that this would make the book liable to prosecution while male homosexuality remained illegal in the UK. Forster did not seek to publish it during his lifetime, believing it to have been unpublishable during that period owing to public and legal attitudes to same-sex love. Īlthough Forster showed the novel to a select few of his trusted friends (among them Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey, Edward Carpenter, Christopher Isherwood, Xiao Qian and Forrest Reid), it was published only posthumously, in 1971. The cross-class relationship between Carpenter and his working-class partner, George Merrill, presented a real-life model for that of Maurice and Alec Scudder. Forster was an admirer of the poet, philosopher, socialist, and early gay activist Edward Carpenter and, following a visit to Carpenter's home at Millthorpe, Derbyshire in 1913, was inspired to write Maurice. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays through university and beyond. ![]()
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