HOWARDS END(霍华德庄园)
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基本信息·出版社：Bantam Classics
·页码：288 页
·出版日期：1985年
·ISBN：0553212087
·条形码：9780553212082
·包装版本：1985-10-01
·装帧：平装
·开本：32开
·外文书名：霍华德庄园
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内容简介Review:
With a new Introduction by James Ivory
Commentary by Virginia Woolf, Lionel Trilling,
Malcolm Bradbury, and Joseph Epstein
Howards End is a classic English novel . . . superb and wholly cherishable . . . one that admirers have no trouble reading over and over again," said Alfred Kazin.
First published in 1910, Howards End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie two families--the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked--some very funny, some very tragic--that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the Wilcoxes' charming country home. As much about the clash between individual wills as the clash between the sexes and the classes, Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, "Only connect," remains a powerful prescription for modern life.
"Howards End is undoubtedly Forster's masterpiece; it develops to their full the themes and attitudes of [his] early books and throws back upon them a new and enhancing light," wrote the critic Lionel Trilling.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) began writing stories while at Cambridge University. He is the author of Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924). His novel Maurice, about a homosexual love affair, was published posthumously in 1971.
James Ivory is an American film director and is best known for the films he has made of E. M. Forster's novels, including Howards End, which enjoyed immense critical and popular success. He lives in New York City.
Howards End is a novel of ideas, not brute facts; in many respects it is an old kind of novel, playful in the eighteenth-century sense, full of tenderness toward favorite characters in the Dickens style, inventive in every structural touch but not a modernist work.
Amazon.com
Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.
Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly.
From AudioFile
An audiobook cannot be satisfactory unless the reader understands the text completely. In the case of a complex and subtle work like Howard's End , that's no small order. Edward Petherbridge does understand and makes all clear to the listener with unaffected authority. At the same time, he achieves such transparency that one forgets one is listening to a performance and simply experiences the story. His delivery is flawless. The story may not appeal to everyone, but the reading won't disappoint. J.N.
Book Dimension
Height (mm) 180 Width (mm) 110
作者简介E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster (born Jan. 1, 1879, London, Eng.-died June 7, 1970, Coventry, Warwickshire) British writer. Forster was born into an upper-middle-class family. He attended the University of Cambridge and from roughly 1907 was a member of the informal Bloomsbury group. His early works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and his first major success, Howards End (1910), novels that show his acute observation of middle-class life and its values. After periods in India and Alexandria, he wrote his finest novel, A Passage to India (1924), examining the failure of human understanding between ethnic and social groups under British rule. Maurice, a novel with a homosexual theme written in 1913, appeared posthumously. Aspects of the Novel (1927) is a classic discussion of aesthetics and the creative process. Awarded an honorary fellowship in 1946 at Cambridge, he lived there until his death.
媒体推荐Spotlight Reviews
1.One of the Best!, September 15, 2002
Reviewer: Lleu Christopher (Hudson Valley, NY)
I have read Howard's End two or three times and listened to it once on tape and it remains one of my favorite novels. Many people were introduced to it by the film, which, good though it was, does not begin to capture the subtle wisdom Forster put into this book. Howard's End can be seen as a quaint period piece about British culture in the early Twentieth Century. On another level, however, it's a brilliant exploration of the human soul. In the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes, Forster has created the perfect embodiment of the eternal conflict between reason and passion. These two families, destined to be united by the marriage of Margaret Schlegel to Henry Wilcox, represent two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of humanity. The Schlegels are artistic, intellectual and impractical; the Wilcoxes materialistic and unapologetically bourgeois. Margaret and Henry have their differences, but it is their relatives who display the more extreme family traits. Margaret's sister Helen is a classic bohemian; Henry's son Charles is a humorless and intolerant banker. As the novel unfolds, the two families are forced to confront each other and decide whether to ultimately part company or compromise. What is most impressive to me about the novel is the naturalness and grace with which the story unfolds. When an author uses characters to embody universal qualities, it is quite a challenge to make the people and story real and not merely symbols. Howard's End succeeds brilliantly as both a thoroughly engaging novel and a rather profound metaphysical inquiry.
2.A clash between idealism and practicality., July 1, 2000
Reviewer: Leonard L. Wilson (Springfield, OH USA)
The Schlegel sisters are interested in the arts and in the more idealistic liberal social movements of their early 20th century world. The Wilcoxes are practical and materialistic. There seems to be little in common between the two families, but not even a highly embarrassing early amorous encounter can keep them apart. Poor Leonard Bast is as idealistic as the Schlegels, but encumbered by an unloved wife with a shady past, he has not their financial means to avoid dealing with the practicalities of life. Caught between the two factions, he eventually is crushed. Only Margaret Schlegel is finally strong enough to bridge the gap between the practical and the ideal by exerting her benevolent humanity, her passionate and yet controlled determination that people must "connect."HOWARDS END is a minor masterpiece, capturing perfectly the conflict between rigid Victorian values and the more free and open changes in the turbulent years before World War I. Forster handles his characters with great sensitivity and sympathy, yet with a subtle and skillful irony. The novel is not intended for rapid reading, but there is a felicity of expression that is an ample reward for careful perusal. Less fastidious than Henry James, not quite the equal of Trollope in characterization, a more subtle stylist than William Dean Howells, Forster combines some of the best elements of all three of these social chroniclers in an important work that is both highly personal and universal in scope.
Customer Reviews
1.A true classic, 29 Dec 2005
Reviewer: Kurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (London, SW1)
The characters are rich and compelling, leading the reader to have real compassion for even the more uncompassionate sorts. It is an excellent way to spend rainy afternoons with a cat on one's lap and a cup of English tea by one's side.
The primary action focusses upon families ' first the Schlegels, genteel without being titled or particularly monied, but far from poor; second, the Wilcoxes, successful financial class, largely without too much background, and a few additional characters such as Leonard Bast and his wife, struggling working-class characters who, through a misappropriated umbrella, become entangled in and damaged by the affairs of the Schlegels and Wilcoxes.
The action throughout much of the novel consists of a study of manners and morals. The elder Schlegel daughter becomes friendly with the dying Mrs. Wilcox, and they become friends of a sort. After the death of Mrs. Wilcox, Margaret remains in contact with the Wilcoxes, eventually being courted by the widower Wilcox. The younger Schlegel daughter, Helen, is much more of a rebel, rejecting the implicit superiority of convention while perfectly happy to revel in the benefits of her station in life. Her sister Margaret lives a bit precariously through Helen (and, indeed, Mrs. Wilcox lives precariously through Margaret). Only the male Wilcoxes seem to be living for themselves, but they are far from attractive characters, more concerned with a subtle greed and propriety that is always ready to assume the worst in anyone beneath their station.
Here enters the unfortunate Mr. Bast, a stable if lowly clerk in a bank in the City of London, with dreams of more, but tied to a job and a wife, both of whom will never lead to greater things. Through a minor accident he encounters Helen, and this eventually leads to an affair, which leads to a potential scandal. Bast, unfortunately, has a run-in with the Wilcox son who assumes a gallantry quite out of place, and suffers the consequences thereof.
This text explores the dominance of inflexible social structures and moral expectations in the post-Victorian England of the early twentieth century. Friendship, vocation and career, love and marriage, attitudes toward money and property ' all are keenly examined and each, in turn, are found wanting of humanity, until finally the elder Schlegel daughter takes a small but meaningful stand.
For those who don't know, Howards End is actually the name of a cottage that features in the book, not prominently, but meaningfully. The text was converted into a film that is quite exquisite, being a well-appointed Merchant/Ivory production a la 'Room with a View' and 'A Passage to India', both also by the same author). Forster is perhaps the quintessential novelist of the English experience in the early part of the last century. His juxtaposition of characters from different social classes and backgrounds, his feeling for his characters (even as they appear to have no feelings themselves, or very repressed feelings by American standards), and his plots that are meandering and uneventful yet interesting and attention-holding make for a style that is very much in keeping with the subject matter.
2.A wonderful story!!, 25 Aug 2005
Reviewer: Jub "Jub" (Thailand)
I read "Howards End" about two months ago. I chose this book because of its attactive and classic cover ,which is out standing. I quite like it because the author had shown the real representation of Brith society that classified to upper, middle and lower class society. It has specific manner and life style ,which is absolutely different in each of the classes. The viewpoint of this book is to sympathize the poor, keep a promise, good deed procreate good returns and bad deed also procreate bad returns ,which I have learnt so much from it.
