The ball landed on number 20 in the latest round of the Classics Club spin. So that means I shall be reading E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. It would be more accurate to say I will be re- reading it since I first encountered this novel around 30 years ago. I can’t remember much about it however other than the first part is set in Italy and features a strong-minded female protagonist.
Published in 1908 , this novel was the last of Forster’s ‘lighter’ works before the heavy weights A Passage to India and Howard’s End. It reflects similar ideas to those later works, particularly the clash between the new liberal social ideas of the Edwardian age and the more sober ideas of the preceding Victorian era. Forster used his work to show his sympathy for the new belief in the importance of individuality and the potential for self improvement. In the character of Lucy Honeychurch he showed how the change of attitudes played out at the individual level since we find Lucy struggling to break free from the restrictions of the Victorian mores and embrace the new liberalism.
I’m sure I missed many of the book’s subtleties first time around, hence why I want to give it another go.