A Room with a View

A Room with a View

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

A Room with a View is a novel by English writer E. M. Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. Merchant-Ivory produced an award-winning film adaptation in 1985. The Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (1998). The first part of the novel is set in Florence, Italy, and describes a young English woman\'s first visit to Florence, at a time when upper middle class English women were starting to lead independent, adventurous lives. Lucy Honeychurch is touring Italy with her overbearing older cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett, and the novel opens with their complaints about the hotel, "The Pension Bertolini." Their primary concern is that although rooms with a view of the River Arno have been promised for each of them, their rooms instead look over a courtyard. A Mr. Emerson interrupts their "peevish wrangling," offering to swap rooms as he and his son, George Emerson, look over the Arno. This behaviour causes Miss Bartlett some consternation, as it appears impolite. Without letting Lucy speak, Miss Bartlett refuses the offer, looking down on the Emersons because of their unconventional behaviour and thinking it would place her under an "unseemly obligation" towards them. However, another guest at the pension, an Anglican clergyman named Mr. Beebe, persuades the pair to accept the offer, assuring Miss Bartlett that Mr. Emerson only meant to be kind. In some editions, an appendix to the novel is given entitled "A View without a Room," written by Forster in 1958 as to what occurred between Lucy and George after the events of the novel. It is Forster\'s afterthought of the novel, and he quite clearly states that "I cannot think where George and Lucy live." They were quite comfortable up until the end of World War I, with Charlotte Bartlett leaving them all her money in her will, but the war ruined their happiness according to Forster. George became a conscientious objector, lost his government job but was given non-combatant duties to avoid prison, leaving Mrs Honeychurch deeply upset with her son-in-law. Mr Emerson died during the course of the war, shortly after having an argument with the police about Lucy continuing to play Beethoven (a German composer) on the piano during the war. Eventually they had three children, two girls and a boy, and moved to Carshalton from Highgate to find a home. Despite their wanting to move into Windy Corner after the death of Mrs Honeychurch, Freddy sold the house to support his family as he was "an unsuccessful but prolific doctor."
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Howards End

Howards End

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

Howards End is a novel by E. M. Forster about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. A strong-willed and intelligent woman refuses to allow the pretensions of her husband's smug English family to ruin her life. Howards End is considered by some to be Forster's masterpiece.
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The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories

The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

English author and critic, member of Bloomsbury group and friend of Virginia Woolf who achieved fame through his novels, which include: Room with a View, Maurice, A Passage to India, and Howard's End. The Celestial Omnibus is a collection of short-stories Forster wrote during the prewar years, most of which were symbolic fantasies or fables. Contents: The Story of a Panic; The Other Side of the Hedge; The Celestial Omnibus; Other Kingdom; The Curate's Friend; and The Road from Colonus. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
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Maurice

Maurice

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

“A century after its publication, it seems as relevant as ever.” –The Guardian Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics. Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come). Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.
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The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

In this searching tragicomedy of manners, personalities, and world views, E. M. Forster explores the "idea of England" he would later develop in Howard's End. Bookish, sensitive, and given to wild enthusiasms, Rickie Elliot is virtually made for a life at Cambridge, where he can subsist on a regimen of biscuits and philosophical debate. But the love-smitten Rickie leaves his natural habitat to marry the devastatingly practical Agnes Pembroke, who brings with her — as a sort of dowry — a teaching position at the abominable Sawston School. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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A Passage to India

A Passage to India

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

When Adela Quested and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, they quickly feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced 'Anglo-Indian' community. Determined to escape the parochial English enclave and explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz, a cultivated Indian Muslim. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves with Aziz, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal that rouses violent passions among both the British and their Indian subjects. A masterly portrait of a society in the grip of imperialism, A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world. In his introduction, Pankaj Mishra outlines Forster's complex engagement with Indian society and culture. This edition reproduces the Abinger text and notes, and also includes four of Forster's essays on India, a chronology and further reading.
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Selected Stories

Selected Stories

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

Although he is best known for his exquisite novels, E.M. Forster also wrote remarkable short stories. He referred to his stories as ‘fantasies’ and his attraction to myth and magic is apparent in many of them. Like his novels, the stories – whether they are set in Italy, Greece, India, and other places Forster visited, or in England itself – contrast the freedom of paganism with the restraints of English civilization, the personal, sensual delights of the body with the impersonal, inhibiting rules imposed by society. Rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises life holds, the stories often feature violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other disruptive happenings that throw the characters’ perceptions and beliefs off balance. This volume includes all twelve stories published during Forster’s lifetime.
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The Machine Stops

The Machine Stops

E. M. Forster

Fiction / Essays

The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two. The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide their needs, predicted technologies such as instant messaging and the Internet. The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine. Travel is permitted, but is unpopular and rarely necessary. Communication is made via a kind of...
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