Maurice

Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster, written between 1913 and 1914, revised several times and not published until 1971, after the author's death. It follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays through Cambridge and into adult life, and its subject is a kind of love that its author could not publish while he was alive.

Maurice's education begins with a schoolmaster's clumsy explanation of sex and continues at Cambridge, where he falls in love with another student who cannot bring himself to accept what he feels. The middle of the book is his attempt to be cured by medicine and by advice, and the last part follows his relationship with Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper's son on a friend's estate, which cuts across class as well as convention.

Forster wrote the novel after a visit to the socialist and early gay rights campaigner Edward Carpenter, and its ending was written to give its lovers a future rather than a punishment. The manuscript was left to be published after his death, and the surviving versions differ most in that final section.