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    A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Ebook312 pages2 hours

    A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    By E. M. Forster and Radhika Jones

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    A charming tale of the battle between bourgeois repression and radical romanticism, E. M. Forster’s third novel has long been the most popular of his early works. A young girl, Lucy Honeychurch, and her chaperon—products of proper Edwardian England—visit a tempestuous, passionate Italy. Their “room with a view” allows them to look into a world far different from their own, a world unconcerned with convention, unfettered by social rituals, and unafraid of emotion. Soon Lucy finds herself bound to an obviously “unsuitable” man, the melancholic George Emerson, whose improper advances she dare not publicize. Back home, her friend and mentor Charlotte Bartlett and her mother, try to manipulate her into marriage with the more “appropriate” but smotheringly dull Cecil Vyse, whose surname suggests the imprisoning effect he would have on Lucy’s spirit.

    A colorful gallery of characters, including George’s riotously funny father, Lucy’s sullen brother, the novelist Eleanor Lavish, and the reverend Mr. Beebe, line up on either side, and A Room with a View unfolds as a delightfully satiric comedy of manners and an immensely satisfying love story.

    Radhika Jon

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411433069
    Unavailable
    A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Author

    E. M. Forster

    E.M. Forster (1879-1970) was an English novelist. Born in London to an Anglo-Irish mother and a Welsh father, Forster moved with his mother to Rooks Nest, a country house in rural Hertfordshire, in 1883, following his father’s death from tuberculosis. He received a sizeable inheritance from his great-aunt, which allowed him to pursue his studies and support himself as a professional writer. Forster attended King’s College, Cambridge, from 1897 to 1901, where he met many of the people who would later make up the legendary Bloomsbury Group of such writers and intellectuals as Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and John Maynard Keynes. A gay man, Forster lived with his mother for much of his life in Weybridge, Surrey, where he wrote the novels A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature sixteen times without winning, Forster is now recognized as one of the most important writers of twentieth century English fiction, and is remembered for his unique vision of English life and powerful critique of the inequities of class.

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    Reviews for A Room with a View (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    4/5

    2,549 ratings103 reviews

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    • 2/5
      It's fun and builds up stronger, but I never really connected with it. Maybe the weak start threw me.
    • 3/5
      Listened to the Classic Tales podcast version. Not bad.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful social satire, and Forster does a great job describing the various characters - who they are and how they interact with each other and their surroundings. I thought the ending was a bit too neat and sweet, as if a focus group decided that a happy ending would make them feel better, when in reality I think Lucy's actions were really going to have her heading down a different and more lonely path in life.
    • 5/5
      I love love love this book.The first part in Florence is quite dull and boring but it is meant to be so and the second part is simply divine! I would finish a chapter with a smile and an uncontrollable delight. The characters are so perfectly themselves and they interact wonderfully and the plot winds with an uncontrolled perfection I didn't think possible. And it's not simply escapist fiction - Lucy must decide between two suiters - which is really a metaphor for her choice to embrace sensuality and passion and truth or to embrace dusty death. This is relevant because Cecil is so retrograde - medieval is the word used - and he is basically and old fashined style relationship which would chain Lucy as a possesion to Cecil, like in Medieval times. The other fellow offers an egaletarian marriage of equals where Lucy can flourish as a woman and not as simply a possesion. I give it my highest recommendations!
    • 4/5
      As a girl, I think I'm supposed to like this book? Well, I found it interesting but a bit floppily characterized-- NOBODY in the entire universe behaves like George. I don't care what you say about it-- nobody does. He's like some kind of transcendentalist puppet. Apparently, Forster based him off of someone he admired/loved? I'm not sure. It may explain why George is such an unrealistic fellow. Even his faults are supposed to be charming, for christ's sake.Also: can't beat Forster for beautiful description and interesting character conflicts, even if the characters involved are George-style ideological megaphones. I enjoyed those parts of this book a LOT. All in all, I think I still prefer Passage to India, though. That doesn't mean, however, that you shouldn't all go out and read this book right away. You all SHOULD. It's mandatory if you speak English and have a soul, apparently. And no wonder-- it's fine fine stuff.
    • 4/5
      Many wonderful things in this novel about finding love and fighting conformity. Lucy is an endearing heroine, brave and cowardly in turns. The minor characters are interesting, the descriptions of place (Windy Corners, Florence) tremendous. Marred for me by a bit more preachiness than I like, and also by the lack of depth of George, Lucy's love. He's depressed at first, has sporadic Lawrencian attacks of "life," is depressed again, and is saved in love by his father at the end. It's hard to rejoice with Lucy in such a choice for life. Still, beautifully written and even though preachy, I'm in agreement with all that's being preached.
    • 2/5
      Forester's timely classic centers around a young girl, Lucy Honeychurch, who takes a trip to Italy with her spinster cousin, Charlotte, and there meets some other English travelers including Mr. George Emerson. Lucy is young, impressionable and used to being told what to think and what to do. However, while in Italy, she and George witnesses a murder (a dispute over 5 francs!) and she begins to slowly understand that life is more than just doing and feeling the things society says you should. George, I think, sees this potential for true emotion in Lucy. He himself is on the brink of some sort of change and sees Lucy a woman who can understand the complicated emotions he is experiencing. But Lucy is scared, she doesn't quite want to leave her safe world behind and so leaves Florence and her unsettling encounter with George. Upon returning to England, her trip seemingly behind her, Lucy accepts the proposal of one Cecil Vyse, a young man who she also spent time with in Rome. No one really likes Cecil and for all his professed modernism and intellectualism, he really just wants to keep Lucy on a pedestal. Thankfully, she finally wises up after another unsettling encounter with George Emerson in which she finally makes choices for herself and no one else.All this happens with such subtle humor and wit. Forester is a master at understatement and descriptiveness at the same time. He paints the scenes of historic Florence with as much precision and beauty as he does Lucy's country home in England. I want to ramble through the woods at her house and see the church and pond. He makes it all come alive and it's beautiful. And the names in this book, they are undeniably English! Lucy Honeychurch, Windy Corner, Cecil Vyse - I mean, doesn't he just sound like a wimp? What's more is Lucy's transformation into a woman who can take charge of her own life and decides what she wants - even when those around her my be hurt by her choice. A beautiful book with so much insight and wit. I loved it.
    • 3/5
      Well, let me begin by saying I love the 1985 Merchant Ivory film adaptation of this book, and have seen it more times than I can count. And because of that, it was next to impossible to read this book without humming Puccini's O Mio Babbino Caro, and imagining the characters exactly as portrayed by the excellent cast. Lucy Honeychurch is a young Victorian woman who travels to Florence, Italy with her cousin Charlotte as chaperon. There they meet a host of English people also on holiday, including the Reverend Beebe who has just taken up a position in Lucy's home village, a flamboyant woman novelist named Eleanor Lavish, and the Emersons, a father and son. On arrival at their pension, Lucy and Charlotte find their rooms are not what had been promised. Most importantly, there is no view. The Emersons offer to exchange rooms, creating a comedy of manners as Charlotte abhors feeling obligated to anyone, not the least people like George and his father, whom she judges to be "common." However, there is an attraction between Lucy and George, which Lucy tries to deny. On returning home she is courted by the arrogant and class-conscious Cecil Vyse, and agrees to marry him as a way of putting her attraction for George out of her mind. But of course that's not the end of the story, and when George and his father appear on the scene in England, Lucy has to come to terms with her own feelings and the importance of making choices guided by one's own sense of right and wrong.I tried to consider this book on its own merits: does Forster's novel stand on its own? I simply couldn't do it. The film is so true to the book; much of the dialogue went directly into the script. I can't quite say why, but I am fairly certain that if I hadn't seen the film I would not have enjoyed this book as much as I did. So I am left giving this book a respectable rating, while urging anyone who has not seen the film to do so ... you will not be disappointed.
    • 5/5
      Lucy Honeychurch is visiting Italy with her cousin, Charlotte, who as an older single female has come along as a chaperone. While on the trip, she meets an "original" older woman, Miss Lavish, who is writing a novel; the stuck-up clergyman Mr. Eager; and the Emersons, a father and son duo whose forthrightness and political leanings rather shock some of the more orthodox crowd. Her time in Italy affects Lucy greatly: she sees a man murdered and experiences her first kiss. Upon returning home, she must decide between living up to the expectations of tradition, as embodied by her cousin Charlotte, or following the desires of her heart.Perhaps it's because I read [A Passage to India] as an English major, or maybe it's the many layers to E.M. Forster's classic story that made me feel, when reading it, that I could write a paper about his use of inside and outside, of old and new. Class distinctions are still important, particularly to the older characters and city dwellers, while less so to the younger and country folk. Lucy's fiance says at one point that Lucy pictures him inside a room, which seems connected with his repression of her spirit and independent thought, hugely in contrast with George Emerson and Frank Honeychurch's behavior outdoors in the Sacred Lake. The layering of metaphors and brilliant characterizations made this a real pleasure to read, and I would not hesitate to read it again knowing that I would get just as much - if not more - out of it with multiple readings. At the same time, the story is accessible and compelling, a classic that is neither long nor slow reading. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      A very good, understated story about an extended holiday that blooms into romance. A young woman traveling with her older, overbearing cousin in Italy is consumed more with the squabbles of British manners than with enjoying the sights of Florence, and more concerned about properly obtaining a Room with a View than with the view itself.The contrast between characters is strong and important to the development of the message of the novel, and seems characteristic of Forster's work.Much like "Pride and Prejudice," this novel is about people taking the long way around their strict society to get where they always needed to end up, and Forster has an excellent turn of phrase on how difficult it is to direct one's own life:"Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. "
    • 4/5
      Lucy Honeychurch and her cousin Charlotte are visiting Florence when they meet Mr Emerson and his son. Later in England, when they encounter the Emersons again, they both have private reasons for wanting to avoid them.I was delighted by much of this; it is astutely observant and gently humorous. Much ado is made over a kiss, which is baffling from a modern perspective, but I suspect this not only reflects attitudes common at the time but that Forster is intentionally showing that his characters are being a bit ridiculous.I would be even more enthusiastic if the final chapters had unfolded as they did. There’s an irritating scene where a man lectures Lucy, telling her what she should do. His motives aren’t unsympathetic, and his advice isn’t unreasonable -- but it is uninvited and he persists even when she becomes obviously upset. Moreover, the story then jumps in time, skipping over Lucy deciding what to do next and how she goes about it. I’m pleased with the final result, but why must you diminish her agency like that?It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, “She loves young Emerson.” A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?
    • 4/5
      The inhabitants of Windy Corner (as well as Pensione Betolini) are left pale and perforated after Forster's serial needling. Forster can only stop heckling his characters long enough to appreciate the song of the season's and the subtle currents of music.
    • 1/5
      I could not find anything interesting about this book at all, particularly after reading the pre-review. I also could not get through the movie, "A Passage to India" although I tried twice. This author does have his fans and may only reflect a difference of tastes in reading material. Readers can judge for themselves.
    • 5/5
      I had mixed feelings about this book. Basically, I enjoyed it. I didn't want to put it down once I got to the last 70 pages, and it had that rush at the end, so for the most part I thought it was good. But there were some points which I thought were sexist (obviously not entirely unexpected), for example with a number of statements like "so illogical are girls", which contrasted with all of the talk about Lucy making her own choices and doing what she wanted to do, which certainly had feminist and even suffragette hints. That said, I definitely enjoyed it and would still recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Sehr schöner Erzählstil, leiser Humor.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful story. It has such a modern, progressive feel to it. Hard to believe it was written in 1908. A true romance recognizing the impact of physical attraction.
    • 4/5
      A painfully slow start but it does pick up. A good read, interesting as it goes.
    • 4/5
      the story of a young woman in the victora age coming to find herself and her own voice. it is a classic for good reason worth reading
    • 3/5
      Florence is one of my favorite cities and a recent article in the NYT caused me to finally read this book. The novel has three aspects, While in Florence the book serves as somewhat of a travel book with Forster's evocative descriptions taking me back. The novel also functions as a comedy of manners, in that it is difficult to understand how constipated Victorian mores could be. Finally, the book triumphs as a romantic novel as the heroine does alright in a Dickensian ending. At times I had to force myself to continue slogging through the text. Forster obviously was trying to convey a break by the modern with Victorian times; however instead of touching this theme gently, he hit it with a sledgehammer. I do not recall the Merchant-Ivory film being faithful to this text, so I will have to watch it again,
    • 4/5
      I read this book not knowing exactly what it was about. I found it initially to be a bit slow, and the characters absurd, going on about nothing. But that is what makes this book is so great! You get Lucy Honeychurch, a young woman traveling with her cousin Charlotte. Lucy lives in a world of extreme etiquette. When a young man of a lower social class steals a kiss, it takes Lucy out of her complacent world. She quickly finds a man at of her own social status, but as her fiancée pushes his thoughts and beliefs on her, Lucy finds herself caught between her social obligations and her newly found feelings. It took me a bit to follow the language and to understand that the author is deliberately exaggerating Victorian attitudes and customs, but once I caught on, it became a very enjoyable, and highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      A fantastic book about a girl, Lucy, who is torn between love and duty - between truth and hypocrisy. The first part Set in florence and england at the turn of the century in the second part. As the story opens out, Lucy learns to acknowlage her true feelings. A wonderfully written warm love story.
    • 5/5
      I love this timeless classic love story. It has a sophisticated wit and unforgetable characters.
    • 4/5
      This book is about an English young woman, Lucy, who is caught in the battle between propriety and passion. Overall, Lucy has little say in the matters that concern her life. At first, she does not reflect deeply on the events that happen to her and because of her. It is not until she witnesses a murder that she begins to think about the events that happen to her and how she interacts with and shapes them. However, she only understands herself and her actions through discourse with other people, who easily influence her frame of mind with emotional appeal or intellectual argument. At one point, Mr. Beebe observes that if Lucy were to live with as much passion as she plays the piano, both her life and the lives of those around her would be much more interesting. Although she ultimately alienates her family to pursue the man whom she loves, even this decision is not reached without the strong influence of Mr. Emerson. In this respect, although the author's definition of passion won over propriety, I was sincerely hoping that Lucy would be able to throw off all the harnesses of well-meaning advice and reach her own conclusion of what do do with her life. I was also disappointed with the rather abrupt and mostly happy ending. In my opinion, although Lucy grew in self-awareness, she never truly discovered herself apart from the influence of others.
    • 4/5
      "A Room with a View" was recommended to me by a very good friend, though I think, given enough time, I would have gotten round to reading it anyway. It's a delightful little book, a tale of love and life, of one girl's discovery that there is more to life than a stolid middle-class English existence. It's also a tale of English customs around the turn of the twentieth century, and of the English tourist abroad. At times the wit is scathing, and rightly so; the reader cheers when what was obviously going to come about finally does, but along the way there is such humour that the story can never be considered boring.
    • 4/5
      A quaint Victorian social satire and romance that makes for a short pleasant read.
    • 4/5
      When I began A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, I wasn't sure what to expect. It's not a long book- less than 200 pages- but I got stuck about one hundred pages into Howard's End four years ago and never completed it. So in late May, I began reading it. It took me nearly a month and a half to complete it, making the story feel much longer than it actually was. I couldn't quite suss out the relationship between Lucy and Charlotte, or exactly why Charlotte found Mr. Emerson and his son so objectionable. I struggled with the rhythm of the novel nearly the whole time they were in Italy. But then they returned to England, and I finally got a feel for Lucy and the rhythm of the story, and in the end, I really enjoyed it. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this novel is that Forster accurately reflects the changes of society and the novel at the time. The conflict between old Victorian proprieties and modern sensibilities and equalities plays out in its pages much the way it did in real life. The upper classes (as well as those who aspired to the upper class, in Charlotte's case) tried to retain their old social values, while the working classes sought progress. And though he never says it explicitly, Forster suggests that those touting progress and reform were more sensible than those who clung to the old ways. This is especially clear in the depictions of Cecil Vyse and George Emerson; Cecil is portrayed as being boorish and lazy, and nearly opposite of George Emerson, whose quiet strength ultimately wins Lucy's heart.
    • 5/5
      For such a forward thinking book set in such a stringent culture, A Room With a View is rather fun to read. E.M. Forster's writing is smooth and his characterizations of people are ones the reader can really relate to. You know a Cecil, you've met a Lucy. And while they're not larger than life characters, they are characters full of life. The story itself is simple yet intriguing, and sits on that shelf of history that is not quite dated and not quiet modern. Also, the Baedeker and English tourist bits are still hilarious.
    • 5/5
      In an era where the heroine playing Beethoven was considered shocking, the novel seems before its time. The Emersons are Socialist athiests devoted to the philosophy of freedom, causing them to behave in a manner that defies convention. Caught between the allure of the Emerson son George and her socially acceptable, yet dry and repressive, fiance Cecil Vyse, Lucy is on the cusp of womanhood and learning where her place in life is supposed to be.Her journey begins in Italy along with her fussy chaperone and cousin Charlotte, the two lamenting over the lack of a view in their room. The Emersons impulsively offer to switch rooms, which offends Charlotte and the older ladies present. The Emersons don't understand that social rules deem it shocking for unmarried ladies to put themselves under the obligation of men they are not introduced to. After much pressing and awkwardness, Charlotte reluctantly accepts the switch. From then on, the Emersons' fate becomes entwined with Lucy's. Lucy and George seem brought together by fate: through witnessing the murder of an Italian passer-by, through the carriage driver' miinterpretation of Lucy' poorly translated request to be take to "the good man" (meaning clergyman), through Cecil's cruel joke on Lucy's neighborhood by securing the uncouth Emersons a home promised to more respectable ladies, and through Charlotte's actions. Cecil and Lucy have no such fatalistic connection. Ultimately, Lucy must make a choice between each man and the vastly different lives they represent.Forster is magnificent with scenery, especially depicting the sensuousness of the Italian countryside. He does great justice to his heroine by depicting her as more a child being repressed by her society. She has hidden passions of her own, as revealed by her piano-playing that stirred the romantic feelings of a clergyman. Despite these feelings, religion is depicted as a repressive force. It is another clergyman that, during an outing to the countryside, forces the carriage driver's girlfriend to get out in the middle of the journey when the couple is caught kissing. These clergymen are English, and the country's presence in Italy is the source of much repression. In England, the repression is almost suffocating: it is at her home there, Lucy is stifled by her engagement with Cecil. Only when in Italy is Lucy free. Italy represents passion, sensuality, and openness, the polar opposite of England. Forster daringly suggests that society de damned, follow your heart wherever it takes you. It is a beautiful sentiment, rendering this one of the most romantic novels of all time. Wonderfully written whether tackling romance, humor, or conflict, this novel is worth rereading.
    • 5/5
      I first read "A Room With a View" by E.M. Forster when I was in college, and though I remembered the book with fondness and kept thinking I should reread it, what I couldn't actually remember was why. Finally, I can answer: the writing is wonderful. It's full of all these little truths and statements about life you've always thought yourself but never put into words. And the story, though simple (a young woman goes abroad for the first time to discover the world and discovers much about life along the way), is true in that way only fiction can be. It's a fast read as well: you feel you've only just begun and look up to discover you're somewhere in the middle, then done.
    • 2/5
      I read this purely because of the Italian setting, though only the first section is set there, in Florence. A lot of action then takes place "off-set" as it were in Rome, before the setting transfers to England. I found most of the characters rather irritating and the situations esp in the England section very dull, though there are a few funny moments due to the ridiculous snobbery of some of them.