Manslaughter, blackmail, violent sex, sudden death: out of materials which might have served a lesser author as the basis for mere melodrama, E. M. Forster created literary vehicles which convey the reader with near-celestial ease to psychological realms as diverse as the London drawing-room and the Indian cave of revelation. The essays collected here range from early commentaries introducing Forster to an American audience, to more recent essays illuminating the subtlety and resourcefulness of his fictional method, the acute modernity of his moral and intellectual concerns. Disputing a long-held view that Forster is intellectually a Victorian, in bondage to the liberal pieties he portrayed so well, these critics point to his capacity for rigorous self-scrutiny and detached observation of those very institutions and ideas so often associated with him. As they reveal new facets of Forster's accomplishment, these essays indicate why the twentieth century now recognizes him as one of its major literary figures. -- From publisher's description.