I have the old Penguin Edition of the book which has an interesting introduction by Oliver Stallybrass who notes the excellent reception Forster's lectures received. He notes that their appeal was not universal. There was at least one more typical critic who didn't approve at all of Forster's very witty and individual approach.
F. R. Leavis attended them all and noted what he considered to be their "intellectual nullity". Stallybrass continues:
"For him [Leavis] the explanation of Forster's 'demonstratively sympathetic reception' and "gruesome" success with his--'certainly his'--capacity audience, is that the latter consisted largely of 'sillier dons' wives and their friends."
The sexism of his view is fairly obvious but there were a large number of dons also present. One Fellow of King's described him thus:
"Morgan never pontificated; he was never doctrinaire; never condescending or supercilious. Above all, although he never raised his voice, he never mumbled. The lectures, as he says in the printed version, were 'informal, indeed talkative. . . The best of the Clark lecturers who followed him have succeeded for the same reason. They have talked, as Morgan was to do most memorably on the air . . . they talked to 'the Common Reader'."
Forster was a fine novelist and what we get in these lectures, I personally feel, are wonderful and frequently useful insights of a genuine practitioner into the intrinsic nature of that "amorphous" and "formidable mass" we call the Novel.
Last edited by fantasyfan; 02-07-2017 at 03:40 PM.
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