Description

“MY MOTHER’S COPY”: AN EXTRAORDINARY ASSOCIATION COPY— FIRST EDITION OF FORSTER’S MASTERPIECE A PASSAGE TO INDIA, WITH HIS INSCRIPTION, DATED 1946, FOLLOWING HIS MOTHER’S DEATH AND LOSS OF HIS FAMILY HOME

FORSTER, E.M. A Passage to India. London: Edward Arnold, 1924. Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in custom red clamshell box.

First trade edition of Forster’s most famous novel, the last published in his lifetime, a profoundly touching association copy, inscribed shortly after his mother’s death, “My mother’s copy. West Hackhurst, 1946.”

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 novel, his last published in his lifetime, as “a miracle of intelligence, tact, irony, prudence and ability” (Connolly, The Modern Movement 45). This copy, with Forster’s quiet inscription, echoes the deeply felt death of his mother in 1945 and a further sense of homelessness caused by the loss, one year later, of their shared home in West Hackhurst. This red-brick mansion was the only building designed by Forster’s architect father before his early death and had served as a frequent haven for the writer, as well as a home for his mother Lily and his Aunt Laura, the sister of his father whose family retained ownership of the estate. At the outbreak of WW II, Forster left London and the threat of air raids for refuge in West Hackhurst, where he continued lecturing, writing, and began working on broadcasts for the BBC. When his mother died there in March 1945, Forster “felt he must begin clearing the house” but could not face more than a “start on the papers and letters,” during which, “intermittently, remembering the loss of his mother, he was still drowned by waves of despair.” At war’s end, Forster traveled to India and on his return found that his father’s relatives wanted him to leave West Hackhurst, a demand arriving “at a moment when, with his mother’s death, he was feeling emotionally ‘homeless? It was part of his place in the world, the place he had won for himself as a writer, and he felt his expulsion as an attack on it. It remained for him to sort his possessions? The task, when he addressed himself to it, appeared enormous. The house contained the accumulations? of his Aunt Laura’s life and his own and his mother’s? There were wicker dress-baskets full of letters? innumerable books? so all through the year of 1946 he continued sorting and reading? He was instinctively spinning his removal out, as a protection against other thoughts,” and he finally left West Hackhurst for Cambridge in November 1946 (Furbank, 256, 264-6). This copy of A Passage to India was among the books in his mother’s library, recorded by Forster as he went through her possessions at West Hackhurst. Almost 40 years later British director David Lean adapted Forster’s masterful novel to the screen, when the 1984 film earned 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. A ‘limited edition’ of 200 copies printed the same year, no priority established. With three pages of advertisements at rear. Kirkpatrick A10. Book about-fine; some toning and chipping to scarce unrestored dust jacket. An extraordinary association copy.