British · 1879–1970
E.M. Forster wrote novels about the English heart's difficulty with connection. "A Passage to India" examined the impossibility of friendship across colonial divides; his earlier novels—"A Room with a View," "Howards End"—dissected English class and repression. Forster's maxim "Only connect" became a literary touchstone. He published no fiction after 1924, though "Maurice," his gay novel, appeared posthumously. The British author lived to ninety-one, a revered figure who had stopped writing novels before most of his readers were born.