About the Author

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. He wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howard's End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. Maurice, his novel on a homosexual theme, finished in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. He died in June 1970. Ruth Padel is a British poet, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has won the UK National Poetry Competition and published six collections of poetry. Voodoo Shop (2002) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot and Whitbread Prizes. The Soho Leopard (2004) is a Poetry Book Society Choice. She wrote the popular "Sunday Poem" column for the Independent on Sunday for three years.