Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) had her say regarding the novels of E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970):
"There are a many reasons which should prevent one from criticizing the work of contemporaries... With a novelist like E.M. Forster this is specially true, for he is in any case an author about whom there is considerable disagreement. There is something baffling and evasive in the very nature of his gifts."