A Room With A View

Description

Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Italy for the first time, dependent on a Baedeker travel guide and her stern chaperone, Miss Bartlett. As she explores Florence, Lucy realises the constraints of her middle-class upbringing and finds herself attracted to George Emerson, a young man also staying at the Pension Bertolini. Then an impulsive kiss and the confusion that follows prompt a sudden departure from the city. Back in England and engaged to the domineering Cecil Vyse, Lucy meets George again. Caught between social obligation and a suppressed desire for a different life, she must learn how to be true to herself.

Author description

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879, attended Tonbridge School and went on to King's College, Cambridge in 1897, where he retained a lifelong connection and was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 1946. Forster wrote six novels. Where Angels Fear to Tread '1905' The Longest Journey '1907', A Room with a View '1908' and Howards End '1910' were all published before the First World War. Fourteen years passed before the publication of Forster's most famous work, A Passage to India, in 1924. Maurice, his novel on a homosexual theme, which he competed in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. His other works include essays, biographies, short stories, plays and a critical work, Aspects of the Novel, as the libretto for Britten's opera Billy Budd. E.M. Forster died in June 1970.