A Room With a View — E.M. Forster

Wit and intelligence are the hallmarks of this probing portrait of the English character. In this story of extreme contrasts -- in values, social class, and cultural perspectives -- an unconventional romantic relationship leads to conventional happiness in a delightful social comedy.

While touring Italy with her overbearing cousin, well-bred Lucy Honeychurch falls in love with handsome but unsuitable George Emerson, only to become engaged to haughty Cecil Vyse. But Lucy is lured away from the conventions of upper-middle-class Edwardian society by her yearnings for the clerk she left behind. A Room with a View satirizes the English notion of respectability -- and remains Forster's most beloved novel and a twentieth-century classic.