E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was an English writer whose novels A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India are beloved classics of English literature. Before his death in 1970 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature twenty times in fifteen separate years.

Phillip Gardner was born in Liverpool in 1936. He studied English Literature at King's College, Cambridge, and after four years of teaching in Japan came to Newfoundland in 1964. He is now a Professor of English at Memorial University.