A Room with a View?

English author E. M. Forster's 1908 book A Room with a View is about a young woman living in the conservative society of Edwardian England. The story, which is set in both Italy and England, blends a love story with an amusing investigation of English society at the turn of the 20th century. In 1985, Merchant Ivory created a successful film adaptation. A Room with a View was named number 79 on The Modern Library's list of the top 100 English-language books published in the 20th century (1998). Early 1900s England's upper middle-class women are starting to live more autonomous, risk-taking lives when the book is set. In the first chapter, Miss Lucy Honeychurch travels through Italy with her overly picky spinster cousin Miss Charlotte Bartlett, who also serves as a chaperone. The women of the Pensione Bertolini in Florence are whining about their accommodations when the book opens. Despite being promised apartments with views of the River Arno, they were given ones that looked out onto a dull courtyard. Forster began writing the "Lucy novel," a book with an Italian setting, toward the end of 1902. He neglected it in 1903 and 1904 in order to focus on other tasks.