A PASSAGE TO INDIA. with handwritten letter from Forster to the owner.
London: Edward Arnold, 1924.
First Edition. Signed by Author. E.M. Forster. A PASSAGE TO INDIA. First Edition with a personalized note, handwritten, signed and dated by Forster from his home in Monument Green where he wrote many of his famous novels.
This particular edition was owned by a fan of Forster in Canada. In her book she mounted his photo on page 4 as well as pasted his letter on the inside front after she received her first edition "A Passage to India.
A very cherished copy indeed!
"Monument Green. Weybridge 20-11- 20
Dear Madame,
Thank you for your letter . I have made arrangements with Messrs' Birrell and Garnett 19
Tavitson Street, to keep all my books in stock, and I know that they would supply you with a copy of Where Angels... if you wish for one. I feel pleased and flattered that the book should be remembered after so many years.Yours sincerely, EM Forster."
Forster's 1921 return trip to India "had the effect of releasing what was to be judged his masterpiece, A Passage to India" (DNB). Andre Gide praised Forster's last novel as "a miracle of intelligence, tact, irony, prudence and ability" (Connolly, The Modern Movement 45).
Octavo, 8vo., 325pp., publisher's original burgundy cloth boards. Neat ownership signature to front blank end leaf with 3 pages of advertisements at rear, A very good, copy with some shelf wear and slight offset from the mounted documents expected.
The basis for the fine David Lean, 1984 Merchant-Ivory film, also the inspiration for the 1960 play by Santha Rama Rau which also influenced the film. The novel is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Forster borrowed the book's title from Walt Whitman's poem Leaves of Grass. Kirkpatrick A10a.
Item #33588 Price: US$2,900.00