Howards End

From Strand Bookstore

"Only Connect," Forster's key aphorism, informs this novel about an English country house, Howards End, and its influence on the lives of the wealthy and materialistic Wilcoxes: the cultured, idealistic Schlegel sisters; and the poor bank clerk Leonard Bast. Bringing together people from different classes and nations by way of sympathetic insight and understanding, the novel addresses the question, "Who shall inherit England?"

From the Publisher

Considered by many critics to be Forster's finest novel, Howards End has average 6,200 copies a year in sales in the rack-size edition.

From the Publisher

This novel is about the confrontation--and reconciliation--of classes in England around the turn of the century.

Review

Virginia Woolf - Atlantic Monthly
"...In "Howards End" there are, one feels..., all the qualities that are needed to make a masterpiece. The characters are extremely real to us. The ordering of the story is masterly. That indefinable but highly important thing, the atmosphere of the book, is alight with intelligence; not a speck of humbug, not an atom of falsity is allowed to settle. And again, but on a larger battlefield, the struggle goes forward which takes place in all Mr. Forster's novels -- the struggle between the things that matter and the things that do not matter, between reality and sham, between the truth and the lie. Again the comedy is exquisite and the observation faultless. But again, just as we are yielding ourselves to the pleasures of the imagination..., we are tapped on the shoulder....We step from the enchanted world of imagination, where our faculties work freely, to the twilight world of theory, where only our intellect functions dutifully. Such moments of disillusionment have the habit of coming when Mr. Forster is most in earnest, at the crisis of the book ..."

Review

Joseph Epstein - New York Times Book Review
"Thick with life, consummate in pace and plot, written in a tone of offhand elegance that is perfect to its subject, [HOWARDS END] also displays a knowledge of human nature, with its quirks, range and complexities, that attains to nothing less than wisdom."

Review

A. N. M. - Guardian (London)
"HOWARDS END...is a novel of high quality written with what appears to be a feminine brilliance of perception....There is an immense liberality in the book, a sympathy that is so little eclectic that it seems indulgent. It is always a humane presentment of real men and women even when their doings surprise us into some kind of protest."

More about the book

HOWARDS END is a vivid portrait of life in Edwardian England, centered on an old country house in Hertfordshire, the object of an inheritance dispute. When the bohemian Schlegel sisters, Helen and Margaret, meet the Wilcox family, convention gives way to a more complex set of standards and emotions in this beloved and remarkable novel. The Schlegels are widely acknowledged to be based on Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa, who lived at Gordon Square with their brother Thoby (Tibby in the novel).

First Line

One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister.