Details
FORSTER, E.M. Virginia Woolf, the Rede Lecture 1941, Cambridge at the University Press, 1942, sm. 8°, FIRST EDITION, SIGNED by Forster on title, original light grey wrappers, title printed in mauve on upper cover [Kirkpatrick A24a: "5000 copies printed. 1s 6d."]; The Development of English Prose between 1918 and 1939, the fifth W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture delivered in the University of Glasgow 27th April, 1944, Glasgow, Jackson, Son & Company, 1945, sm. 8°, original brown wrappers, title printed on upper cover. [Kirkpatrick A25: "1000 copies printed. 2s."]
The second work is a scarce and important crystallisation of Forster's views on modern fiction, in which he states (p.9): "the economic movement, from the land to the factory, is not the only great movement which has gathered strength during our period. There has been a psychological movement, about which I am more enthusiastic. Man is beginning to understand himself better and to explore his own contradictions. This exploration is conveniently connected with the awful name of Freud, but it is not so much in Freud as in the air. It has brought a great enrichment to the art of fiction. It has given subtleties and depths to the portrayal of human nature. The presence in all of us of the subconscious, the occasional existence of the split personality, the persistence of the irrational especially in people who pride themselves on their reasonableness, the importance of dreams and the prevalence of day-dreaming -- here are some of the points which novelists have seized on and which have not been ignored by historians." (2)
The second work is a scarce and important crystallisation of Forster's views on modern fiction, in which he states (p.9): "the economic movement, from the land to the factory, is not the only great movement which has gathered strength during our period. There has been a psychological movement, about which I am more enthusiastic. Man is beginning to understand himself better and to explore his own contradictions. This exploration is conveniently connected with the awful name of Freud, but it is not so much in Freud as in the air. It has brought a great enrichment to the art of fiction. It has given subtleties and depths to the portrayal of human nature. The presence in all of us of the subconscious, the occasional existence of the split personality, the persistence of the irrational especially in people who pride themselves on their reasonableness, the importance of dreams and the prevalence of day-dreaming -- here are some of the points which novelists have seized on and which have not been ignored by historians." (2)