Given the legal problems surrounding the publication of Maurice, uncovering "literary precedents" for the novel proves difficult. Even though D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928; see separate entry) did not appear in print until 1928 (in Florence, Italy)—fourteen years after Forster had completed his first manuscript draft of Maurice—critical commentators have been quick to label Maurice as a male version of Lawrence's effort.

However, if that is the case, then Forster, himself, becomes the precedent. Perhaps the specter of nontraditional but romantically inclined gamekeepers, a feature of both novels, proves too irresistible for the scholarly eye and mind. Again, we must turn to Forster, himself, for assistance in this matter. The writer tells us, for example, that Alec Scudder is senior in date to the prickly gamekeepers of D. H. Lawrence, and had not the advantage of their disquisitions, nor, though he might...