The Longest Journey (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)

ISBN: 1965684505

Author: Forster, E. M.

Condition: New

Perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of [Forsters] works. -Lionel TrillingE. M. Forsters The Longest Journey is a searching meditation on the costs of conformity and the elusive pursuit of authenticity in Edwardian England. The story, Forsters favorite among his own novels, centers on Frederick (Rickie) Elliot, a physically frail and introspective Cambridge graduate, whose aspirations as a writer are thwarted by the suffocating expectations of family and society. Rickies ill-fated marriage to the pragmatic Agnes Pembroke becomes emblematic of his capitulation to social convention, stifling his creative spirit and estranging him from his own ideals. The narratives episodic structure mirrors Rickies own fragmented journey toward self-knowledge, punctuated by the discovery of a half-brother, Stephen, whose existence both challenges and ultimately redeems Rickies sense of identity.While The Longest Journey is not a straightforward autobiography, it is generally regarded by experts as containing significant autobiographical elements, reflecting Forsters own struggles, values, and artistic concerns. Forsters prose is laced with philosophical inquiry, interrogating the boundaries between myth and reality, and exposing the hypocrisies of class and morality-also a concern of his later work. The novels symbolic resonance is heightened by its allusion to Percy Bysshe Shelleys Epipsychidion, suggesting that the longest journey is not merely the passage through life, but the arduous process of becoming true to oneself in a world hostile to difference. The result is a work of profound, sometimes unsettling, introspection, and social critique. This Warbler Classics edition is a meticulous republication of the 1907 first edition and includes a detailed biographical timeline.E. M. FORSTER (1879-1970) was an English fiction writer, essayist, biographer, and travel writer whose most popular novels include A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. Before his death in 1970 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature twenty times in fifteen separate years.