E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster (King’s, 1897) is best known for his novels, particularly A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India. Forster’s final novel, Maurice was published in 1971, the year after Forster’s death. A tale of gay love in early 20th century England, the eponymous hero is perhaps one of the most famous fictional characters to be a Cambridge University LGBT+ Alumnus.

At Cambridge, Forster met Lytton Strachey (Trinity, 1899), Leonard Woolf (Trinity, 1899) and other members of the Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual society considered by one biographer to have encouraged “overt full-blooded--almost aggressive—homosexuality”. A number of the Apostles of that generation, including John Maynard Keynes (King’s, 1902), formed what became known as the Bloomsbury Group.

Nino Strachey’s book ‘Young Bloomsbury, a New Queer History’, includes the following:

“…Maynard Keynes left the Treasury to return to King's College as an economics lecturer in 1919. One of his first actions was to help revive the Apostles - the secret discussion society where so many of the original Bloomsbury Group had met in the early 1900s. Old members were allowed to return for the Saturday night meetings, and Lytton Strachey and E. M. Forster spent many pleasurable weekends in Cambridge surveying each new set of initiates. Students often found these first encounters awe-inspiring. Shyness was replaced by excitement when they realised the famous authors had a sense of humour, and encouraged open conversation on any topic, however subversive. Stracher's approach tended to be bawdy and direct; Forster's manner was more tentative, his attendance less frequent thanks to a period away working in India. But each was equally committed to nurturing their connection with queer young men. Forster's novel Maurice - written in 1913-14 but unpublishable during his lifetime - celebrated same-sex love between university students, and between men of different classes. Although Strachey did not tackle these topics directly in his writing, he promoted sexual honesty through all his personal interactions.

Unaffected by modern concerns regarding power dynamics of student-teacher relationships, Keynes used his position at Kings College and his link with the Apostles society to befriend and seduce undergraduates. Strachey and Forster were bemused by the sheer number of choices on offer, envying their friend's proximity to an ever-replenishing supply. Lytton told his brother James in November 1921 that Keynes’ ‘activities seem terrific - particularly the social ones, and he confessed he was terrifically exhausted keeping it up. I don't know whether there are other reasons for his exhaustion, but on the whole I should think so’.”