E.M. Forster’s 1909 lecture on Rudyard Kipling’s poetry was a key document in his development as a critic. He used this talk as an occasion to re-examine his relationship to the “Art-for-Art’s-Sake” principles of the late-Victorian Aesthetic Movement, which continued to guide influential contemporaries such as the artist and author, Max Beerbohm, with whom Forster had both personal and professional connections. Distinguishing his own responses to Kipling from those of Beerbohm, as expressed through the latter’s savagely satirical visual works, was a necessary step in Forster’s forging of an individual voice for the modern age. But despite Forster’s wish always to avoid labels and to escape being identified with inflexible positions, he turned in his later years to open advocacy of Art for Art’s Sake.