Edward Morgan Forster penned Maurice (1913) at a time when homosexuality was a punishable crime and generally viewed as an abomination in the UK. The intervening years have been relatively kind to this persuasion, with the softening of laws on homosexual behaviour in Wales and England in the late 1960s, which led to the publication of the novel in 1971, the year after its author’s death. New readers of Maurice are often surprised by two factors: (1) the tenderness every page exudes, and (2) the uncharacteristic happy-ever-after ending. It is also for these reasons that the novel was dismissed by eminent critics upon publication. It was somehow deemed unrealistic that the novel’s homosexual characters should go on to lead a life that even heterosexuals dared not dream of. Several decades later, with our understanding of homosexual life having evolved to a more sophisticated level, we know better. We now see that what Forster proposes in Maurice is anything but a sentimental fant...