Belchamber

Charles Edwin William Augustus ChambersMarquis and Earl of Belchamber, Viscount Charmington, and Baron St. Edmunds and Chambersknown familiarly as Sainty, is the scion of an ancient English aristocratic family. Behind him stretches a rogues' gallery of picturesque upper-crust scoundrels. But he is uninterested in riding to hounds or drinking or whoring in the great tradition of his forebears, and though he admires his tough-minded puritanical Scottish mother, he lacks her unrelenting moral self-assurance. Sainty is instead a sensitive soul, physically delicate, sexually timid, intellectually inclined, utterly honest, and thoroughly decent, but constitutionally incapable of asserting himself. When it comes to assuming the responsibilities of his inheritance, to managing his feckless younger brother Albert or fathoming his sly cousin Clyde, and, above all, to the essential business of marrying and continuing the family line, Sainty hasn't a prayer.

Howard Sturgis (1855—1920) was born to American parents in London and educated at Eton and Cambridge. He wrote three novels–Tim: A Story of Eton (1891), All That Was Possible (1894), Belchamber (1904)–and a number of short stories.

Edmund White is Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University. His most recent book is Chaos: A Novella and Stories.

E. M. Forster (1879—1970) was a novelist, short-story writer, and critic born in London. His most famous works include Howard's End, A Passage to India, and A Room with a View.