A Room With a View

E.M. Forster

Jan 1997 · Spotify Audiobooks · Narrated by Wanda McCaddon

About this audiobook

Published in 1908, A Room with a View was one of Forster's earliest novels and it has become one of his most famous and popular. The story is set in Florence, Italy, and Surrey, England and centers on young Lucy Honeychurch's choice between propriety and love. It is an accomplished and beautiful love story, full of generous insights.

Edward Morgan (E.M.) Forster was born in 1879 in London and educated in Cambridge. After graduating he traveled to Greece and Italy. The Story of a Panic was his first short story and was published in 1904. Forster taught in Germany and England. His first novel was Where Angels Fear to Tread, published in 1905. Forster joined the International Red Cross at the outbreak of World War I and was posted in Alexandria until 1919. In 1924, he published A Passage To India. He refused knighthood but was awarded the Order of Merit in 1969. He died in 1970.

About the author

Edward Morgan Forster was born on January 1, 1879, in London, England. He never knew his father, who died when Forster was an infant. Forster graduated from King's College, Cambridge, with B.A. degrees in classics (1900) and history (1901), as well as an M.A. (1910). In the mid-1940s he returned to Cambridge as a professor, living quietly there until his death in 1970. Forster was named to the Order of Companions of Honor to the Queen in 1953. Forster's writing was extensively influenced by the traveling he did in the earlier part of his life. After graduating from Cambridge, he lived in both Greece and Italy, and used the latter as the setting for the novels Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and A Room with a View (1908). The Longest Journey was published in 1907. Howard's End was modeled on the house he lived in with his mother during his childhood. During World War I, he worked as a Red Cross Volunteer in Alexandria, aiding in the search for missing soldiers; he later wrote about these experiences in the nonfiction works Alexandria: A History and Guide and Pharos and Pharillon. His two journeys to India, in 1912 and 1922, resulted in A Passage to India (1924), which many consider to be Forster's best work; this title earned the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Forster wrote only six novels, all prior to 1925 (although Maurice was not published until 1971, a year after Forster's death, probably because of its homosexual theme). For much of the rest of his life, he wrote literary criticism (Aspects of the Novel) and nonfiction, including biographies (Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson), histories, political pieces, and radio broadcasts. Howard's End, A Room with a View, and A Passage to India have all been made into successful films.