A Room with a View (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Forster, E. M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141183292 ISBN 13: 9780141183299

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2000

Synopsis

E.M. Forster's beloved novel of forbidden love, culture clash, and the confines of Edwardian society
 
Visiting Florence with her prim and proper cousin Charlotte as a chaperone, Lucy Honeychurch meets the unconventional, lower-class Mr. Emerson and his son, George. Upon her return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to the supercilious Cecil Vyse, but she finds herself increasingly torn between the expectations of the world in which she moves and the passionate yearnings of her heart. More than a love story, A Room with a View (1908) is a penetrating social comedy and a brilliant study of contrasts - in values, social class, and cultural perspectives - and the ingenuity of fate. In her illuminating introduction, Forster biographer Wendy Moffat delves into the little-known details of his life before and during the writing of A Room with a View, and explores the way the enigmatic author’s queer eye found comedy in the clash between English manners and the unsettling modern world, encouraging his reader to recognize and overcome their prejudice through humor. This edition also contains new suggestions for further reading by Moffat and explanatory notes by Malcolm Bradbury.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Publisher:

6 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Back Cover:

A Room With a View portrays the love of a British woman for an expatriate living in Italy, a country which to Forster represents the forces of true passion. Caught up in a world of social snobbery, Forster's heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, finds herself constrained by the claustrophobic influence of her British guardians, who encourage her to take up with a well-connected boor. When she regrets that her hotel room has no view, a member of the lower class offers to trade rooms with her. Lucy becomes caught in a struggle between her own emotions and social conventions. In the end, however, Lucy takes control of her own fate and finds love with a man whose free spirit reminds her of a "room with a view".

There are some writers whose work is especially suitable for out-loud reading and E.M. Forster is one. His voices enter the ear with such a delicate balance of force and refinement that listeners are immediately enchanted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0141183292
• ISBN 13: 9780141183299
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 5
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Bradbury Malcolm