A Passage to India (First Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)

“A Passage to India is one of the greatest modern novels about empire. Paul Armstrong’s thoughtful and wide-ranging edition provides historical context, a history of the novel’s reception, and recent critical debate. It will be invaluable for classroom use.” ―PERICLES LEWIS, Yale University

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

• The text of E. M. Forster’s 1924 masterpiece, accompanied by Paul B. Armstrong’s masterful introduction and expert annotations.
• Carefully chosen illustrations and a textual appendix to deepen student appreciation for and understanding of the novel.
• A rich collection of background and contextual materials thematically organized to encourage classroom discussion. Topics include “India and Empire,” “The Author and India,” and “The Author and the Novel.”
• “Criticism,” including thirteen contemporary responses from both Indian and British voices as well as eleven wide-ranging modern essays by, among others, Lionel Trilling, Wilfred Stone, Brenda R. Silver, Sara Suleri, Homi K. Bhabha, Benita Parry, Stuart Christie, Amardeep Singh, Carey J. Snyder, and Ambreen Hai.
• Earl G. Ingersoll’s consideration of the David Lean film adaptation of A Passage to India.
• A chronology and a selected bibliography.

 

About the Series
Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format―annotated text, contexts, and criticism―helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

E. M. Forster was one of the major novelists of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in 1879 and educated at Cambridge. His other novels include A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. He died in 1970.

Paul B. Armstrong is Professor of English and former Dean of the College at Brown University. He was previously a professor and a dean at the University of Oregon and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has also taught at the University of Copenhagen, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Free University of Berlin, the University of Virginia, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. He is the author of How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art; Play and the Politics of Reading: The Social Uses of Modernist Form; Conflicting Readings: Variety and Validity in Interpretation; The Challenge of Bewilderment: Understanding and Representation in James, Conrad, and Ford; and The Phenomenology of Henry James. He is editor of the Norton Critical Edition of E. M. Forster’s Howards End and of the fourth and fifth Norton Critical Editions of Heart of Darkness.