Trigger Warning Added to EM Forster’s A Passage to India by US Publisher

EM Forster’s A Passage to India has been given a trigger warning by publishers warning for “offensive” language, prompting concerns that English literature is being tarnished by American cultural fixations.

The 1924 novel has been reissued in the US by publisher The Modern Library complete with a new disclaimer cautioning readers that the work famous for its critique of British imperialism contains “attitudes of this time”.

Readers opening A Passage to India are confronted with a note warning them of the “offensive“ language and “cultural representations” contained in the book.

The disclaimer adds that publishing Forster’s work in an unedited form does not constitute “an endorsement” of the writer, who is often regarded as one of the greats of the 20th century.

The warning printed in the book has raised concerns that canonical works by British writers are being dragged into “febrile” American cultural conflicts, and unfairly deemed offensive by publishers swayed by “United States sensibilities”.

The warning printed in the opening pages of the 2021 US edition of A Passage to India states: “This book was published in 1924 and reflects the attitudes of its time. The publisher’s decision to present it as it was originally published is not an endorsement of any offensive cultural representations or language.”

The novel concerns a school mistress visiting the fictional city of Chandrapore and the nearby Marabar Caves, where she is allegedly sexually assaulted by an Indian doctor, bringing about a reckoning with racial tensions.

It was noted for its humanity and depictions of Indians as cultured equals to their British rulers, with the rules of the Raj an impediment to cooperation, and racial language is used by characters shown to be prejudiced.

Revelations that Forster’s work has been deemed worthy of a trigger warning come after his contemporary, friend, and fellow English writer Virginia Woolf was branded with a similar disclaimer for potentially “offensive” content in her novel To The Lighthouse.

Neither writer has been treated this way by publishers in the UK, and the emerging trend of American publishers branding British authors as problematic based on US preoccupations has caused concern on both sides of the Atlantic.

American academic Deborah Appleman, a teacher and professor at Carleton College who has led creative writing courses for prison inmates, said the treatment of Forster’s work was “disheartening”.

She said: “One of the most troubling aspects of the current movement to either cancel literature or use trigger warnings is the way in which literature is completely decontextualised.

“A Passage to India is firmly located in a specific place and time, and to superimpose current United States sensibilities onto the novel seems wholly inappropriate to me.

“It is an example of what I have called a kind of presentism, where contemporary readers superimpose their own current values and standards onto the world of a novel, even one as carefully wrought as EM Forster’s.”

British writer Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: “It’s a shame that classic works of English literature are being dragged into a culture war that has little connection to their subject matter.

“In the febrile, polarised atmosphere of contemporary America, uninformed readers will take one look at the trigger warning on the front of A Passage to India and assume it was written by a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, rather than a liberal homosexual who was a critic of the British Empire.

“It would be better to include a page at the beginning which says, ‘This book was first published in 1924 and contains language and attitudes that may not be the same as yours or your friends, but presumably that’s one of the reasons you picked it up.’”

The new edition has been issued by The Modern Library, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Whole UK subsidiaries have not followed suit in their most recent editions.

Penguin Random House has previously drawn criticism for removing or editing racial terminology in the works of PG Wodehouse, in a move similar to rewrites of Agatha Christie novels and James Bond adventures carried out by Harper Collins and Ian Fleming Publications respectively.

The Modern Library has been contacted for comment.