A Room with a View

Nov 22, 2025 11:20 PM

Author:E. M. Forster

A Room with a View

The Penguin English Library Edition of A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

'"But you do," he went on, not waiting for contradiction. "You love the boy body and soul, plainly, directly, as he loves you, and no other word expresses it ..."

Lucy has her rigid, middle-class life mapped out for her until she visits Florence with her uptight cousin Charlotte, and finds her neatly ordered existence thrown off balance. Her eyes are opened by the unconventional characters she meets at the Pension Bertolini: flamboyant romantic novelist Eleanor Lavish, the Cockney Signora, curious Mr Emerson and, most of all, his passionate son George.

Lucy finds herself torn between the intensity of life in Italy and the repressed morals of Edwardian England, personified in her terminally dull fiancé Cecil Vyse. Will she ever learn to follow her own heart?

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Reviews

The narrative casts a mesmeric spell... intelligent, beautifully written, heartfelt and true, and a great book

—— Sunday Times

I would rather have written Ford Madox Ford's novel than all the books I have written. After reading it a dozen times, I still find a mystery at its heart... an exercise in elegance and a triumph of structure. I am always imitating it and always failing. The prose makes my heart ache with envy

—— Ruth Rendell , Guardian

An astounding novel

—— The Times

Sometimes the best presents come in small packages...masterful

—— Daily Telegraph

A central figure, artistically and influentially, in the modern movement...a masterpiece of Impressionism, as well as of intricate plotting, technical manipulation and powerful irony

—— Guardian

A sense of ambiguity and fluidity, of there being no absolutes, only relativities, is dazzlingly displayed in The Good Soldier

—— Economist

My favourite novel... You expect a boring novel about Edwardian marriages. This could not be more misleading. It’s a gothic melodrama with a high body count

—— Ned Beauman , Guardian

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