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Article: Maurice October 1971: David Leavitt measures the impact of E.M. Forster's passionate novel of gay love, published after his death. (Justifying our love).
- Article from:
- The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)
- Article date:
- November 12, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Regent Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Although he had written Maurice in 1913 and 1914 (and dedicated it "to a happier year"), E. M. Forster would not allow the novel to be published during his lifetime. His reasons were various. First and foremost, to publish an explicitly homosexual novel (or at least one in which the hero neither committed suicide nor suffered punishment) might have opened him up in 1914 to criminal prosecution. The enactment of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967, as a consequence of the Wolfenden Report released 10 years earlier, eased the situation for homosexual men in England considerably. But by then, according to his biographer P.N. Furbank, Forster "was less interested ... in the theme ...