Book Club Guide

Howards End

by E.M. Forster · 1910 · Classics

Key themes

The inner life versus the outer life — and whether they can connect
England — who owns it, who belongs to it, who destroys it
Class, culture and the impossibility of 'only connect'

About this book

Three families — the intellectual Schlegels, the business-minded Wilcoxes and the lower-middle-class Basts — become entangled through property, love and tragedy. Forster's novel, anchored by its epigraph 'Only connect', asks what England is and who belongs to it — and whether connection across class and sensibility is even possible.

Published in 1910, Howards End was an immediate critical and popular success. It is the novel in which Forster's social and humanist concerns find their fullest expression. He published no more fiction after A Passage to India (1924).

Discussion questions

The novel's epigraph is 'Only connect.' By the end, does the novel believe connection is possible — and what does it require?
The three families represent different Englands — intellectual, commercial, working-class. How does Forster use their interactions to make an argument about national culture?
Leonard Bast is the novel's most poignant figure — the clerk who reaches for a culture that cannot accommodate him. What is Forster saying about the relationship between culture and class?
Margaret Schlegel is pragmatic where her sister Helen is absolute. Does the novel endorse Margaret's accommodation with the Wilcoxes — or is her compromise a quiet tragedy?
Howards End was published in 1910. Which of its concerns about England and its social divisions feel most contemporary — and which feel specific to Edwardian anxieties?