Forster was an English writer from a middle-class family of an Anglo-Irish and Welsh background born in 1879. He was raised by female relatives after his father died when he was a year old. A country house that he lived in as a boy with his mother in Hertfordshire served as the model for Howards End in the novel. 

His best known and most widely acclaimed novels are A Room with a View (1908), Howards End, and A Passage to India (1924). All of them deal with critiques of English society and are concerned with its future. A Passage to India is notable as a critique of English colonialism in India and English colonists’ attitudes toward Indian people. His novel Maurice (written 1913-1914, revised 1932 and 1952-1960), which follows the story of a queer relationship between two young men, was not published until after Forster’s death in 1970. Forster, who was himself gay, said in 1914 that the novel could not be published “until my death and England’s” (Rose, Peter. “Peter Rose on the peculiar charms of E.M. Forster.” Australian Book Review, 2011). Howards End itself was viewed as scandalous in light of Helen and Leonard’s affair in the novel.