Maurice by E.M. Forster, illus. by Luke Edward Hall

This illustrated edition by Luke Edward Hall (10,000 Kisses) of a bold novel is one of defiance and bravery. As beautifully crafted as it is heartwrenching, this love story transcends time and generations.
 
People were all around them, but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered, 'I love you.'
From curious schoolboy to studious scholar, Maurice Hall grows with all the confidence his privileged status allows. The path to success is measured and assured, as long as he follows the rules dictated by society. But things quickly change as he finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. First through Clive, a fellow student he meets at Cambridge, and then through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive's country estate, Maurice experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening, one which his contemporaries cannot condone. 
 
Maurice is widely considered a founding work of modern gay literature. Although completed in 1914, this groundbreaking novel could not be published in Forster's lifetime. Fittingly, it acts as a piercing critique of the suffocating ideals that permeated British society at the time. Forster himself said: 'I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.'