Forster's Essays

BOOK REVIEWS history, which on a whole seems constructive but understandably isn't always accurate. If there is a criticism, it is that not all of the authors are successful in their attempts to construct a queer identity for Forster. However, the half that is successful carries the weight of this book and sets a standard for the future of queer theory and its relevance to other authors. One cannot help but wonder the status of future books that will come from this ... Queer James, Queer Wilde, Queer Woolf. Such a series would be indicative of a new trend in queer and cultural studies. Roberto C. Ferrari The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Forster's Essays E. M. Forster. "The Prince's Tale" and Other Uncollected Writings. P. N. Furbank, ed. Abinger Edition. Volume 17. London: André Deutsch, 1998. 344 pp. £25.00 THE SIXTY-FIVE ESSAYS brought together in this volume may help to dispel the widely held belief that Forster wrote little. This is, of course, true enough with respect to the output of fiction, but the commonplace collapses before the sizeable body of writing that flowed from his pen, seemingly without effort, in the form of book reviews, occasional essays, reminiscences, journalism, and broadcast talks. Forster himself drew on this large and varied outpouring for Abinger Harvest ( 1936) and Two Cheers for Democracy (1951). Even given this further volume, another collection or two could be made out of the pieces scattered about in journals and the daily press. This miscellany offers some essays that will be known to the specialist who hitherto has had to search them out in yellowing periodicals and dusty newspapers, but the scholar of the period as well as the general reader will find in it much that is new. (The editor neglects to state that a few items were reprinted in Albergo Empedocle and Other Writings, edited by George H. Thomson in 1971). The bulk of the volume, comprising thirty-three essays, deals with books and writers and brings together reviews mainly published in the 1920s and 1930s as well as a few general articles on William Cowper, George Crabbe, and Mrs. Gaskell. The remaining thirty-two essays, the first published in 1906 and the last in 1963, are divided under eight serviceable headings: The Arts in General, Diversions, Places, India, The English Scene, The Political Thirties, Memoirs, and Age. A casual and quite brief introduction sets out editorial policy, singles out a few particularly striking examples including the review of a translation of Gi209 ELT 42 : 2 1999 useppe di Lampedusa's novel Il gattopardo that (inexplicably) gives the volume its title, and focuses on Forster's strengths as a reviewer. At the end is a list of the forty-eight books reviewed, a list of the original place of publication of each essay (excluding page numbers), and an annotated index. Forster's musing about the problem of seeing Maurice into print might be invoked here: "Publishable—but worth it?" Answers will predictably vary. Journalistic writing, generally a thankless task even when well paid, has a rapid "consume by" date. Of the books reviewed the large majority have faded utterly; some had little interest and scant vitality in their own time—and thus come in for a sound, if polite, drubbing ; not one is of what today would be considered an unquestionable masterpiece, although significant authors are represented—Coleridge, A. E. Housman, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf—as are a clutch of Continental writers including Chekhov, di Lampedusa, Dostoevsky, Gide, and Tolstoy . In the secondary rank of English authors are names familiar only to the student of the period: Hillaire Belloc, David Cecil, J. Middleton Murry. The main interest in reprinting these pieces lies, then, in their stylistic virtuosity rather than their substance, and in this the volume's pleasure and, to use a now old-fashioned word, charm come into their own. Much craftsmanship is on display, sometimes of an admittedly dated kind since many of Forster's observations are cast in a belletristic rather than analytical mode. But there is, and one either takes it or leaves it, his characteristic voice, that unmistakably personal inflection confidently articulating whimsy...