A Great Unrecorded History A New Life of E. M. Forster [Paperback]

ANew York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice

Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

ALA Stonewall Honor Book

Finalist for James Tait Black Memorial Prize

E. M. Forster's homosexuality was the central fact of his life. Between Wilde's imprisonment and the Stonewall riots, Forster led a long, strange, and imaginative life as a gay man. He preserved a vast archive of his private life---a history of gay experience he believed would find its audience in a happier time. Seeing Forster's life through the lens of his sexuality, Wendy Moffat's biography offers us a dramatic new view---revealing his astuteness as a social critic, his political bravery, and his prophetic vision of gay intimacy.A Great Unrecorded Historycasts fresh light on one of the most beloved writers of the twentieth century.

WENDY MOFFATis a professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.A Great Unrecorded Historyis her first book.

[A Great Unrecorded Historyis] a well-written, intelligent and perceptive biography . . . [Moffat] uses the sources for our knowledge of Forster's sexuality, including letters and diaries, without reducing the mystery and sheer individuality of Forster, without making his sexuality explain everything. Colm T?ib?n, The New York Times Book Review

None of [Forster's] biographers have had either the will or the wherewithal to concentrate as closely on Forster's sexuality as Wendy Moffat . . . InA Great Unrecorded History,she offers an insightful, revelatory portrait of a man who deeply resented having to hide such an important side of himself . . . Ms. Moffat's overarching interests are in tracing Forster's attitudes about sex and hypocrisy and in placing this increasingly outspoken figure within the context of his changing times. Janet Maslin, The New York Times

The Forster who emerges from Moffat's work is a more human and slS"