Through personal letters and remembrances, E.M. Forster portrays the real-life scenes that were inspiration for his many successful novels about India. In the process, The Hill of Devi becomes a fascinating record of a vanished civilization.
Join a young E.M. Forster on his personal journey of discovering his beloved India for the first time. Through letters written home and personal recollections, Forster paints the picture of Dewas State, a strange, bewildering, and enchanting slice of pre-independence India.In this collection, Forster shares insight into the lives of Indian royalty, and at times humorous accounts of the stark contrasts between excess and poverty he encounters. From letters that set the scene for Forster’s lifelong friendship with the Maharaja, to an essay on the Maharaja himself and his experiences as the Maharaja’s personal secretary, The Hill of Devi is a fascinating chronicle of the author’s experience in the land he called "the oddest corner of the world outside Alice in Wonderland."The Hill of Devi is an essential companion to Forster’s masterwork, A Passage to India.
E. M. Forster
E.M. Forster published his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, in 1905, which was quickly followed in 1907 by The Longest Journey and then in 1908 by A Room with a View. Forster’s major breakthrough came in 1910 with the book Howard’s End. Forster was associated with the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of intellectuals and peers, including Virginia Woolf, Benjamin Britten, Roger Fry, and John Maynard Keynes. The 1924 publication of A Passage to India firmly cemented Forster in the literary firmament as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. It was the last novel Forster ever completed.Forster then turned his attention to teaching and criticism; his Clark Lectures, delivered at Cambridge in 1927, were gathered into a much-admired collection of essays on writing published as Aspects of the Novel. In 1946, Forster accepted a fellowship at Cambridge where he remained until his death in 1970.Forster’s other writings include The Hill of Devi, an account of his experience as secretary in the Indian state of Dewas Senior; Pharos and Pharillon, a group of essays about Alexandria originally published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf; Maurice, a novel on homosexual love; and The Life to Come, a collection of short stories.
