A Passage To India - SIGNED, LIMITED Edition 1924 by Forster, E M - 1924

London: Arnold, 1924. Octavo. Original cloth-backed boards. Top edge gilt. Paper spine label. Pp. 325. Number 197 of 200 copies signed by E. M. Forster to the limitation page. As with all signed, limited editions, condition is of paramount importance. This copy has very minor creasing and rubbing to the head and tail of the spine, the cloth has remained remarkably unfaded. The boards are very bright and clean with none of the usual wear and tear. The paper spine label is a little age-toned but is clean, unrubbed and bright. No slipcase. The very scarce original spare paper spine label is to be found at the end of the volume. The pages are unfoxed and are fresh and clean and the binding is very firm. Scarce in any form and a very near fine, bright, exceptionally clean copy. Based on Forster's own experiences in India in 1912, it is a novel of the effects of colonialization and colonial rule. He completed the first seven chapters in 1913 but it would be a further ten years and with much encouragement from friends including, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, that it would be finished. Forster had been simultaneously working on a critical reading of a draft of the 1922 'Oxford' edition of his great friend T. E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom'. Forster referred to it as a 'masterpiece' and it had affected him strongly. P. N. Furbank remarked that 'Seven Pillars affected Forster not only as a man but as a writer. He wrote the final two chapters of 'A Passage To India' under its influence, completing them, and the novel, in a burst of confident energy'. Forster himself had stated that 'Seven Pillars' had 'helped me finish a book of my own'. Criticised at the time for a number of reasons, one key concern was due to the interracial friendship between the key protagonists. It is now, however, placed amongst an elite list of works based around post-Colonial studies including Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' and Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim'. Andre Gide had referred to it as a 'miracle of intelligence, tact, irony, prudence and ability'. Selected as one of the great works of 20th Century English Literature by the 'Modern Library', winner of the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and selected by 'Time' magazine in its 'All time 100 novels' list.