Howards End

The story revolves around three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings (Margaret, Helen, and Tibby), whose cultural pursuits have much in common with the Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, an impoverished young couple from a lower-class background. The idealistic, intelligent Schlegel sisters seek to help the struggling Basts and to rid the Wilcoxes of some of their deep-seated social and economic prejudices.

The Schlegels, a family of intellectual and idealistic sisters, once befriended the Wilcoxes, a wealthy and conventional family, during their time in Germany. Helen Schlegel visits the Wilcoxes' country house, Howards End, where she becomes engaged to Paul Wilcox but soon regrets the hasty decision and they break off the engagement. At a concert, Helen takes Leonard Bast's umbrella by mistake and heads home. After awkwardly retrieving it, Leonard, an impoverished clerk, leaves with her sister Margaret's card.

Later, the Wilcoxes move to London and become neighbours with the Schlegels. Margaret befriends Ruth Wilcox, the matriarch of the family, who feels a deep connection to Howards End. Ruth, on her deathbed, writes a note leaving the house to Margaret, but her widowed husband Henry and his children conceal the inheritance and burn the note.

Leonard Bast lives with a woman named Jacky. When Jacky shows up at the Schlegels' house looking for her "husband" one night, Helen is mystified. Leonard later explains the situation: he had been out walking under the stars that night and Jacky found Margaret's card. Henry Wilcox and his daughter Evie visit the Schlegels, and Henry recommends that Leonard resign from his job due to the anticipated collapse of his employer’s company. Time passes as Margaret and Henry's friendship turns into a romance. They become engaged despite opposition from Henry's children, who remember and fear their mother’s dying wish to give Howards End to Margaret.

Helen appears at the wedding of Evie Wilcox with Leonard and Jacky, who are now married and in dire financial straits because of Henry's thoughtless advice. He recognizes Jacky as his former mistress and accuses the Schlegels and Basts of plotting against him. Although disturbed by the revelation, Margaret forgives Henry and wishes to salvage their relationship.

Helen strongly disapproves of Henry's mistreatment of the Basts and spends the night with Leonard discussing their plight. Helen later confides in her brother Tibby and decides to send financial help to the Basts, but Leonard returns the first cheque and declines further assistance.

After her wedding to Henry, Margaret becomes concerned about Helen's restless travels. When their Aunt Juley falls ill, Margaret asks Helen to return to England, but Helen refuses to see the family. Margaret and Henry visit Howards End, hoping to surprise Helen, and discover her secret pregnancy. Margaret stands by her sister and urges Henry to forgive her as she has forgiven him, but he remains unconvinced.

Leonard arrives at Howards End the next day, tormented by his affair with Helen and unaware of her presence there. Charles Wilcox attacks Leonard, who stumbles backward into a bookcase. It collapses and falls on him, covering him with books. Leonard, who had undiagnosed heart disease, experiences heart failure and dies. Margaret decides to leave Henry, but he reveals that Charles will be charged with manslaughter by the local authorities. Charles is found guilty and sentenced to prison.

Henry, overwhelmed by shame, agrees to honour Ruth's wish and leave Howards End to Margaret. He also stipulates that, after Margaret's death, the property will pass to the son of Helen and Leonard. Helen returns to Howards End, and the family warmly welcomes her and her son.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Howards End 38th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

A Manchester Guardian review written in the year of the novel's publication praised it as "a novel of high quality written with what appears to be a feminine brilliance of perception."{{Cite news |date=2002-06-15 |title=An excellent beginning|work=The Guardian|location=London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jun/15/classics.fromthearchives |access-date=2023-08-08 |issn=0261-3077}}

Critics have described Howards End as a "Condition-of-England novel" for its depiction of the poverty and precarity of the Bast family as well as the rapid changes in the social and economic structure of England in the Edwardian period.{{Cite web |title=British Library |url=https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/howards-end-and-the-condition-of-england |access-date=2023-08-08 |website=bl.uk |archive-date=10 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230810230255/https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/howards-end-and-the-condition-of-england |url-status=dead }} The Wilcox family represent "new money" as well as global capitalism with their ownership of the Imperial and West African Rubber Company, while the German Schlegel sisters represent the educated, cosmopolitan "New Woman" and raise questions of women's suffrage. The Wilcoxes were possibly inspired by the harsh landlords of Forster's childhood home,Ashby, Margaret (1995). Stevenage Past. Phillimore & Co. {{ISBN|978-0-85033-970-3}} while the Schlegels were loosely based on Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell, who were Forster's contemporaries in the liberal and humanist-minded Bloomsbury Group.Sellers, Susan, ed. (2010). The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. England: Cambridge University Press. p. 16. {{ISBN|978-0-521-89694-8}}

The eponymous house, Howards End, "is a mystical symbol of the beauty and gentility of that fast-disappearing world. The question of who will own it – for which read England's social future – dominates the book."{{Cite news |date=2016-02-08 |title=Song of Inexperience (Published 2016) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/books/review/song-of-inexperience.html |access-date=2023-08-08}} Located in the countryside, away from London, it has immense sentimental value for Mrs Ruth Wilcox, who threatens the male line of inheritance when she attempts to leave the house to her new friend Margaret Schlegel upon her death. The core message of the novel is its epigraph, "Only connect", a similar theme to that of Forster's novel Maurice, which also features cross-class relationships. In the end, the three families are forced into a form of uneasy reconciliation; critic Barbara Morden argues:

"Ultimately, it is Leonard Bast, the uprooted and dispossessed peasant, who proves to be the key to the novel's pattern of connection and theme of inheritance. It is his and Helen's illegitimate baby, a child of nature rather than a 'Son of Empire', born at the heart of the old house into a newly constituted family, who will inherit Howards End, perhaps England."{{Cite web |title=British Library |url=https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/howards-end-and-the-condition-of-england |access-date=2023-08-08 |website=bl.uk |archive-date=10 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230810230255/https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/howards-end-and-the-condition-of-england |url-status=dead }}

{{Main|Rooks Nest House}}

File: Rooks Nest House, Stevenage.JPG

Forster based his description of Howards End on a house in the hamlet of Rooks Nest in Hertfordshire, his childhood home from 1883 to 1893. The house, known in Forster's childhood as "Rooksnest" had, as in the novel, been owned by a family named Howard, and the house itself had been called "Howards" in their day.Editor's Introduction, in Howards End, Penguin Books. This information was passed to Forster many years after the publication of the novel by a family friend, the composer Elizabeth Poston, who by that point lived at the house; this came as a surprise to Forster, who concluded that having known and then forgotten these facts like a child, he had unwittingly used them when writing the novel. According to his description in an appendix to the novel, Rooks Nest was a hamlet with a farm on the Weston Road just outside Stevenage."Appendix: Rooknest" in Howards End, Penguin Books. The house is marked on modern Ordnance Survey maps at {{gbmapping|TL244267}}.{{citation needed|date=March 2020}}

File:Bs 03 rooks nest square.jpg

The area to the north-west and west of Rooks Nest House is the only farmland remaining in Stevenage (the area to the east of the house now comprises the St Nicholas neighbourhood of the town). The landscape was termed "Forster country" in a letter to The Times signed by a number of literary figures, published on 29 December 1960. The letter was written in response to two compulsory purchase orders made by the Stevenage Development Corporation; it expressed the hope that 200 acres of the countryside around the house could be preserved both as one of the last beauty spots within 30 miles of London and "because it is the Forster country of Howards End."The letter says, "Literate people the world over feel that it [Forster country] should be preserved in its original setting as one of our greatest literary landmarks." It was signed by W. H. Auden, John Betjeman, Sir Arthur Bryant, Lord David Cecil, Graham Greene, John G. Murray, Harold Nicolson, Max Reinhardt, Dr C. V. Wedgwood, and Vita Sackville-West. [http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=herlib&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=CS170483612&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0 Authors Fear Threat To 'Forster Country'.] The Times [London, England] 28 December 1960: 10. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 29 November 2017. In 1979, the centenary of the author's birth, the area was officially named the Forster Country by local planners after efforts by a campaign group, the Friends of the Forster Country, which aimed to preserve for future generations the landscape that Forster knew.Cooper, Samuel. [http://www.hertsmemories.org.uk/content/herts-history/topics/literary_hertfordshire/e-m-forster/forster-country Forster Country—Its recognition on the centenary of E. M. Forster's birth]. Hertsmemories.org.uk[http://www.forstercountry.org.uk/index.php/the-forster-country?showall=&start=2 "The Forster Country—The Fame of Forster Country"]. [http://www.forstercountry.org.uk/ The Friends of the Forster Country]. www.forstercountry.org.uk, accessed 2 January 2022 In 1997, a sculpture marking Forster's connection with the area was unveiled beside St Nicholas churchyard by the MP for Stevenage, Barbara Follett.The sculpture is marked with the words "Only Connect" with a fuller text: "THE RAINBOW BRIDGE THAT SHOULD CONNECT THE PROSE IN US WITH THE PASSION." Maryan, Pauline. [http://www.ourstevenage.org.uk/content/topics/stevenage_sculptures/only-connect-by-angela-godfrey ONLY CONNECT, BY ANGELA GODFREY – St Nicholas' churchyard]. ourstevenage.org.uk In September 2017 Rooks Nest house was put up for sale.{{cite news|url=http://www.thecomet.net/news/stevenage-childhood-home-of-author-e-m-forster-goes-on-the-market-for-1-5-million-1-5205016|title=Stevenage childhood home of author E M Forster goes on the market for £1.5 million|last=McEvoy|first=Louise|date=21 September 2017|work=The Comet|access-date=21 November 2017|archive-date=15 June 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180615111024/http://www.thecomet.net/news/stevenage-childhood-home-of-author-e-m-forster-goes-on-the-market-for-1-5-million-1-5205016|url-status=dead}}{{Cite news|url=http://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/rooks-nest-house-childhood-home-novelist-e-m-forster-goes-sale-167434|title=The childhood home of novelist E. M. Forster goes up for sale – Country Life|date=2017-10-20|work=Country Life|access-date=2017-11-28}}

In the novel, Wickham Place, the London home of the Schlegel sisters, was demolished to make way for a block of flats; it did not have a direct real-world counterpart. Forster's conception of it owed a great deal to number 1 All Souls Place, where the sisters of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson lived.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/12/movies/l-howards-end-forster-s-sisters-502492.html|title='HOWARDS END'; Forster's Sisters|date=1992-04-12|work=The New York Times|access-date=2017-11-28|issn=0362-4331|quote=The two Miss Schlegels are a sort of blending of the three Miss Lowes Dickinson (G. L. D.'s sisters) whom I saw in passing when we were all young. Wickham Place is their house, 1 All Souls' Place, since destroyed, not far from Queens Hall.}}1 All Souls Place was built by G.L. Dickinson's portraitist father Lowes Cato Dickinson in 1877–9. Forster writes of the building as 'a tall dark red wedge-shaped house all windows and hospitality, and it was there that I saw him once or twice towards the end of his life. He was then nearly ninety and he walked around the rooms with a candle to show me some pictures which he thought would give me pleasure.' Forster, E. M. (1934). [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.525237 Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson]. Edward Arnold. p. 3.

On Beauty, a 2005 novel by Zadie Smith, is loosely based on Howards End and was written as a homage to Forster.{{cite web |last1=Moo |first1=Jessica Murphy |title=Zadie, Take Three |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/zadie-take-three/304294/ |website=The Atlantic |access-date=19 October 2023|date=16 September 2005}}

A stage adaptation by Lance Sieveking and Cottrell, was performed in 1967 on tour and at the New Theatre in London, with Gwen Watford, Gemma Jones, Michael Goodliffe, Joyce Carey and Andrew Ray in the cast. Forster co-operated in the production.

The Inheritance is a play in two parts by Matthew Lopez, which derives inspiration from the Forster novel to portray instead the generation that came after the height of the AIDS crisis, addressing the life of a young gay man in New York."Spanning generations and interlinking lives, The Inheritance is 'an exquisitely truthful and funny modern classic' (Telegraph) that brilliantly transposes E.M. Forster's novel 'Howards End' to 21st century New York" – {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20181123101131/https://www.inheritanceplay.com/ part of the production's description]}}, taken from The Inheritance official website, retrieved 5 December 2018 The play opened on 2 March 2018, at Young Vic and later transferred to the West End at the Noël Coward Theatre.{{Cite web|url=https://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/the-inheritance-west-end|title=The Inheritance (West End)|website=Young Vic website|access-date=2020-01-02}} The production won four Olivier Awards including Best Play.{{Cite web|url=https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/theatre/olivier-awards-2019-winners-in-full-inheritance-company-come-from-away-a4111531.html|title=The Inheritance and Company triumph at the 2019 Olivier Awards|date=2019-04-07|website=Evening Standard|location=London|access-date=2020-01-02}} The play opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in November 2019 and in March 2020 closed a few days earlier than announced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The play was awarded the 2021 Tony Award for Best Play.{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/theater/the-inheritance-review-broadway-matthew-lopez.html|title='The Inheritance' Review: So Many Men, So Much Time|last=Brantley|first=Ben|date=2019-11-17|work=The New York Times|access-date=2020-01-02|issn=0362-4331}}{{cite news |last1=Jacobs |first1=Julia |title=‘The Inheritance’ wins best play, making Matthew López the first Latino writer to take home the award. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/theater/the-inheritance-best-play-matthew-lopez.html |access-date=11 December 2024 |work=New York Times |date=26 September 2021 |quote='The Inheritance,' the sprawling two-part play about gay culture in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, won the Tony Award for best play, making Matthew López the first Latino playwright to win the award. … The play, which ran more than six hours in two separately sold parts, opened in November 2019 and closed with the pandemic shutdown on March 11, 2020 (it had originally planned to close on March 15).}} Das Vermächtnis, the German translation by Hannes Becker, premiered at Munich's Residenztheater in January 2022; at Vienna's Theater in der Josefstadt in March 2025.{{Cite web |last=Affenzeller |first=Margarete |date=2025-03-16 |title=Hinreißendes "Vermächtnis" im Theater in der Josefstadt |url=https://www.derstandard.at/consent/tcf/story/3000000261510/hinreissendes-vermaechtnis-im-theater-in-der-josefstadt |access-date=2025-04-05 |website=Der Standard |language=de-AT}}

{{main|Play of the Month}}

A British television adaptation of the novel in the BBC's Play of the Month series was broadcast in 1970, and starred Leo Genn, Sarah-Jane Gwillim, and Glenda Jackson.

{{main|Howards End (TV series){{!}}Howards End (TV series)}}

In November 2017, a 4-part miniseries by Kenneth Lonergan was released on the BBC and Starz.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/cast-howards-end|title=BBC – All-star cast announced for Kenneth Lonergan's adaptation of Howards End for BBC One – Media Centre|publisher=BBC}}{{cite web|last1=Andreeva|first1=Nellie|title=Starz Boards 'Howards End' BBC Limited Series; Hayley Atwell, Matthew Macfadyen & Tracey Ullman To Star|url=https://deadline.com/2017/02/starz-bbc-howards-end-limited-series-based-on-novel-hayley-atwell-matthew-macfadyen-star-1201912774/|website=Deadline|date=15 February 2017 |access-date=15 February 2017}}

{{main|Howards End (film){{!}}Howards End (film)}}

A film version made in 1992 stars Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Hopkins, and Samuel West. The film was named Best Picture by BAFTA in 1992 and won the 45th Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}. At the 65th Academy Awards the film won three Academy Awards for films released in 1992: Thompson for Best Actress, Luciana Arrighi for Best Art Direction, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.{{Cite web

| url = https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1993

| title = The 65th Academy Awards {{!}} 1993

| website = oscars.org

| publisher = Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

| access-date = 2004-11-24

}}

In 1949, an adaptation by Horton Heath aired on NBC University Theatre, with Alma Lawton as Margaret Schlegel, Eileen Erskine as Helen Schlegel, Tom Dillon as Henry Wilcox, Ben Wright as Charles Wilcox, Terry Kilburn as Leonard Bast, and Queenie Leonard as Jacky Bast.Palmer, Zuma (25 March 1950). [https://www.newspapers.com/image/683801457/?clipping_id=97342992 "Sunday Programs"]. Los Angeles Evening News. p. 18. Retrieved 6 April 2024.

In 2009, a 2-part adaptation by Amanda Dalton was released on BBC Radio 4, with John Hurt as the narrator, Lisa Dillon as Margaret Schlegel, Jill Cardo as Helen Schlegel, Tom Ferguson as Tibby Schlegel, Alexandra Mathie as Aunt Juley, Malcolm Raeburn as Henry Wilcox, Ann Rye as Ruth Wilcox, and Joseph Kloska as Charles Wilcox.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0107x1n|title=EM Forster – Howard's End – BBC Radio 4 Extra|publisher=BBC}}

Allen Shearer's opera Howards End, America (2016), with a libretto by Claudia Stevens, moves the action to 1950s Boston.{{cite web|url=http://scdb.swem.wm.edu/?p=collections/findingaid&id=8096&rootcontentid=27321|title=Claudia Stevens Papers, 1967– ongoing|website=scdb.swem.wm.edu}} The adaptation is discussed in Stevens' article "Page to Stage: A New Opera, Howards End, America" in the Polish Journal of English Studies.Stevens, Claudia, 2 March 2017 [http://pjes.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PJES-3.2-2017-3.pdf Journal of the Polish Association for the Study of English (PASE) No. 3.2 (including, at p.37, Page to Stage: A New Opera Howards End, America)] pjes.edu.pl accessed 2 January 2022

{{reflist}}

{{Wikisource|Howards End|Howards End}}

• {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/e-m-forster/howards-end}}
• [https://english.shabd.in/howards-end-e-m-forster/book/10277810 Howards End] at Shabd.in{{Gutenberg|no=2891|name=Howards End}}
• {{librivox book | title=Howards End | author=E. M. FORSTER}}
• [http://www.bl.uk/works/howards-end Howards End] at the British Library
• [http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/howards/ Study guide] with plot summary, analysis and background
• [http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/howardsend/ Free online notes, analysis and study questions]

{{E. M. Forster}}

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Category:1910 British novels

Category:Novels by E. M. Forster

Category:British novels adapted for radio

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Category:British novels adapted into operas

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Category:British novels adapted into plays

Category:British social novels

Category:Novels about sisters

Category:Novels set in mansions and country houses

Category:Works about social class

Category:Edward Arnold books