E. M. Forster completed Maurice in 1914, but the work was not published until 1971, the year following the writer's death. The third revision of the manuscript was discovered, in 1970, in Forster's rooms at Cambridge, shortly after his cremation. A note in Forster's own hand on the manuscript read, "Publishable; but is it worth it?" Without Forster's presence to respond to his own inquiry, the question raises two possible issues: "is it worth it" (publication) in terms of the artistic quality of the novel, or "is it worth it" insofar as concerns the principal substance of the piece, Maurice Hall's homosexuality? The homosexual issue arises as the major social concern of the novel, and one needs to consider, before anything else, the link between that issue and the eventual publication of Maurice.

In 1885, when Forster had reached only the age of six, Henry Du Pre Labouchere (1828-1904), Radical...