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The disregard of a dying woman's bequest, a girl's attempt to help an impoverished clerk, and the marriage of an idealist and a materialist intersect at an estate called Howards End. There, the lives of three families become entangled. The Wilcoxes, who own the estate, are a wealthy family who made their fortune in the American colonies. The Schlegel siblings – Margaret, Helen, and Tibby – are lively socialites whose spirited and active lifestyles are representative of the intellectual bourgeoisie. And the Basts are a young couple from a lower-class background who are struggling to survive. As chance brings them together, societal conventions come into question as does the ownership of Howards End. Through the fate of the estate – as well as the lives of the families who are affiliated with it – Forster creates a brilliant parallel to the fate of English society itself.

First published in 1910, “Howards End” is E. M. Forster’s classic story regarding social conventions of different strata of English society at the end of the 19th century. The story centers around three families; the Wilcoxes, a wealthy family who made their fortune in the African colonies; the Schlegels, three siblings, Margaret, Helen, and Tibby, who represent the intellectual bourgeoisie; and the Basts, a young struggling couple from a lower class background. The Schlegels are lively socialites whose spirited and active lifestyles bring them by chance into contact with the Wilcoxes and the Basts. Through the entanglement between these three families, Forster masterfully depicts the struggle between the upper and lower classes that would dominate England at the end of the 19th century. Forster drew upon memories of his childhood home, Rooks Nest in Hertfordshire, for the titular Howards End, a country estate of the Wilcoxes where part of the story takes place, and whose ownership comes into question when the Wilcox matriarch, Ruth, makes a death-bed bequeath of the estate to Margaret Schlegel. The fate of Howards End, and the lives of the family’s affiliated with it, is brilliantly represented by Forster as a parallel to the fate of English Society itself at the turn of the century. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

"Howards End" is E. M. Forster's classic story of the varying struggles of members of different strata of the English middle class. The story centers around three families; the Wilcoxes, who made their fortune in the American colonies; the Schlegels, three siblings who represent the intellectual bourgeoisie; and the Basts, a young struggling lower middle-class couple. «Howards End», one of Forster's greatest works, is a classic dramatization of the differences in life amongst the English middle class.