SOURCE: "A Collection of Old New Stories by E. M. Forster," in The New York Times Book Review, May 13, 1973, pp. 27-8, 30.

In the following excerpt, Welty, an acclaimed novelist and essayist, notes that while the stories of The Life to Come are linked to Forster's other fiction by their emphasis on passion, they are flawed by the absence of Forster's comic genius.

The Life to Come is the title of a short story that was written 70 years ago by E. M. Forster and is receiving its first publication today. The author himself valued it: it "came more from my heart than anything else I have been able to turn out," containing "a great deal of sorrow and passion that I have myself experienced." But because the sorrow and passion had a homosexual nature, the story has gone unpublished. Upon Forster's death, not quite three years ago, it was...