Howards End and A Room with a View - Softcover

Forster, E. M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451520068 ISBN 13: 9780451520067

Publisher: Signet Classics, 1986

Synopsis

This volume features two of Forster’s most celebrated works, A Room with a View and Howards End. A Room with a View tells the story of a young Englishwoman travelling abroad who must grapple with sexual repression and the insatiable expectations of her peers. In a more domestic setting, Howards End tells the story of several families whose varying wealth and social esteem illustrates the many intricacies of class relations in turn-of-the-century London. Both works of sociological significance, these novels perfectly illustrate Forster’s preoccupation with class difference and social hypocrisy.

About this title

About the Author

Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879, attended Tonbridge School as a day boy, and went on to King's College, Cambridge, in 1897. With King's he had a lifelong connection and was elected to an Honorary Fellowship in 1946. He declared that his life as a whole had not been dramatic, and he was unfailingly modest about his achievements. Interviewed by the BBC on his eightieth birthday, he said: 'I have not written as much as I'd like to . . . I write for two reasons: partly to make money and partly to win the respect of people whom I respect . . . I had better add that I am quite sure I am not a great novelist.' Eminent critics and the general public have judged otherwise and in his obituary The Times called him 'one of the most esteemed English novelists of his time'.

He wrote six novels, four of which appeared before the First World War, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howard's End (1910). An interval of fourteen years elapsed before he published A Passage to India. It won both the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Maurice, his novel on a homosexual theme, finished in 1914, was published posthumously in 1971. He also published two volumes of short stories; two collections of essays; a critical work, Aspects of the Novel; The Hill of Devi, a fascinating record of two visits Forster made to the Indian State of Dewas Senior; two biographies; two books about Alexandria (where he worked for the Red Cross in the First World War); and, with Eric Crozier, the libretto for Britten's opera Billy Budd. He died in June 1970.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet Classics
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0451520068
• ISBN 13: 9780451520067
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English