Howards End, E. M. Forster
Howards End, E. M. Forster
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Howards End

Author: E. M. Forster

Narrator: Steven Crossley

Unabridged: 11 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/29/2010

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Considered by many to be E. M. Forster's greatest novel, Howards End is a beautifully subtle tale of two very different families brought together by an unusual event. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic, leading lives of "telegrams and anger." When the elder Mrs. Wilcox dies and her family discovers she has left their country home—Howards End—to one of the Schlegel sisters, a crisis between the two families is precipitated that takes years to resolve.

Written in 1910, Howards End is a symbolic exploration of the social, economic, and intellectual forces at work in England in the years preceding World War I, a time when vast social changes were occurring. In the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, Forster perfectly embodies the competing idealism and materialism of the upper classes, while the conflict over the ownership of Howards End represents the struggle for possession of the country's future.

Forster refuses to take sides in this conflict. Instead he poses one of the book's central questions: In a changing modern society, what should be the relation between the inner and outer life, between the world of the intellect and the world of business? Can they ever, as Forster urges, "only connect"?

About E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster (1879–1970) 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 and also attitudes toward gender and homosexuality in early-twentieth-century British society. Among his most notable novels are Howards End, A Room with a View, A Passage to India, The Longest Journey, and Where Angels Fear to Tread.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on March 21, 2020

***New mini-series begins showing on Starz in the U.S. April 2018.*** ”Discussion keeps a house alive. It cannot stand by bricks and mortar alone.” I’ve fallen in love with the Schlegel sisters twice now in separate decades. I plan to keep falling in love with them for many decades to come. They a......more

Goodreads review by Jim on October 06, 2019

The title refers to a British country home, not a mansion like a Downton Abbey, but a small comfortable home with charm. (Although it seems that the story is set at about the same time as Downton Abbey.) The story revolves around two sisters who, on separate visits, fall in love with the home and in......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on November 19, 2018

Forster is the Jane Austen of the 20th century. He clearly read her novels and fell in love. And this makes him rather unusual amongst his literary peers. He didn’t do anything new; he didn’t write with any particular passion or any attempt at breaking a literary boundary. His writing is relativ......more

Goodreads review by Candi on February 26, 2019

3.5 stars "A place, as well as a person, may catch the glow. Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences--eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps, but colour in the d......more

Goodreads review by Mark on December 12, 2022

After I was totally bowled over by A Room with a View - I felt compelled to follow up with another from E.M. Forster, so why not Howard’s End? Why not indeed – I am so glad I did as I met – Margaret (Meg) Schlegel, but more about her later. This book was right up my Strasse. On reflection, as this was......more