The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey (1907) is a bildungsroman by E. M. Forster. Rickie Elliot, an insecure young writer struggles to retain his artistic and moral clarity in the face of mounting professional failures and family drama. We first meet Rickie Elliot as a bright and promising student at Cambridge. Orphaned by his (hated) absentee father and the premature death of his beloved mother, Rickie had few friends and spent much of his childhood at boarding school, where his physical frailties and meek manner led to him being abused by his more aggressive classmates. But at Cambridge, among other intelligent and artistically sensitive boys, he finally feels at home. He is even welcomed into a group of philosophically enlightened students led by Stuart Ansell, whom Rickie becomes particularly in awe of.