Since E. M. Forster's death in 1970, his novel Maurice and a volume of
short stories have been published for the first time. When it was
published in 1976, this book was one of the first full-length critical
introductions to Forster's fiction to include these posthumous works.
Despite the fact that most of Forster's work deals with life before the
First World War, Professor Martin sees him as an essentially modern
writer concerned with one of the most fundamental and persistent
psychological problems of our time: the gulf between man's spiritual
needs and the demands and pressures of society. Professor Martin
comments closely on the text and attempts to assess the significance of
the travel theme in Forster's writing and the impact of his
homosexuality on the content of his fiction: he also highlights
important affinities between Forster's work and that of other early
twentieth-century writers, including Joyce and D. H. Lawrence.