-E.M. Forster

The British writer E. M. Forster took the title for his most famous novel, A Passage to India (1924), from Whitman’s 1871 poem “Passage to India.” Whitman’s poem expressed an optimistic vision of a unified world with “oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, / The lands to be welded together.” Forster’s novel, however, takes a more critical look at the legacy of British colonialism in India than does Whitman’s poem, which credits U.S. and European culture with uniting the globe through imperialism and industrialization. Forster also found kinship with Whitman through his dealings with the gay rights activist Edward Carpenter, the author of Some Friends of Walt Whitman: A Study in Sex-Psychology (1924).