A Room With A View
Unabridged Large Print Edition
by E. M. Forster
This unabridged large print Edition is not an electronic scan or reproduction. The text has been formatted and edited by human editors, based on the classic original edition, and is printed on heavyweight bright white paper with a fully laminated cover.
One of Forster’s earlier works, A Room with a View (1908) has demonstrated enduring popularity arising from the vivid cast of characters, humorous dialogue, and comedic commentary on the restrained culture of Edwardian-era England. and fixation on “propriety” among the minor gentry. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century.
The novel opens in Florence with Miss Lucy Honeychurch, touring Italy with her spinster cousin and chaperone, Miss Charlotte Bartlett complaining about their rooms at the Pensione Bertolini, where they were promised rooms with a view of the River Arno but are instead given rooms overlooking a drab courtyard. Another guest, Mr. Emerson, offers to swap rooms, as he and his son, George, have rooms with views of the river. Charlotte rejects the offer, offended by Mr. Emerson’s lack of tact and propriety and fearing they would be placed under an “unseemly obligation”. Another guest, Mr. Beebe, an Anglican clergyman, persuades Charlotte to accept the offer.
As the characters paths cross and intersect both in Italy and back home in England, Lucy gradually emerges as her own woman, her sheltered eyes opening to ideas unlike those she has known growing up in the English countryside. Unexpectedly, she realizes that the social rules she has always regarded as natural and absolute are actually arbitrary and that “propriety” can be a somewhat flexible mindset.
About the Author
E. M. Forster, (1879-1970) was born into an upper-middle-class family. Educated at Cambridge, he was a long-standing member of the Bloomsbury group of British literary figures. His first major novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), proved extremely popular, but his first major financial and critical success was Howards End (1910). Forster’s novels dealt with themes middle-class life and its values and class distinctions and and hypocrisy in British society. His final novel, A Passage to India (1924), examined the lack of understanding between ethnic and social groups in the British Empire.
In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio, and an active advocate for individual liberty, penal reform and opposition to censorship. He continued to make public and television appearances through the 1950s and into the 1960s, passing away at 91 in 1970.
Product details
ASIN: B0CZ4MPDMW
Publisher: S. M. Holden (March 25, 2024)
Language: English
Paperback: 295 pages
ISBN: 979-8320487984
Item Weight: 1.47 pounds
Dimensions: 7.44 x 0.67 x 9.69 inches
Customer Reviews: 4.1 out of 5 stars 7,334 ratings
3.9 on Goodreads 186,627 ratings
List Price $16.97
