Details
FORSTER, E.M. A Room with a View, London, Edward Arnold, 1908, 8°, FIRST EDITION, SIGNED by the author on title, with half title, original dark red cloth, lettered in gilt on spine and upper cover. [Kirkpatrick A3a: "2000 copies printed. 6s."]
In an article "A View without a Room", published in The Observer, July 27, 1958, p.15, Forster described the characters of this novel as being "created even earlier than 1908. The Italian half of the novel was almost the first piece of fiction I attempted. I laid it aside to write and publish two other novels, and then returned to it and added the English half." In the same article, he imagines how a sequel to the novel might have continued with George and Lucy becoming conscientious objectors during the First World war, the latter running "a more immediate risk by continuing to play Beethoven. Hun music!" Forster envisages their squalid move from Hampstead to Carshalton, and how with a family of three children, they begin "to want a real home -- somewhere in the country where they could take root and unobtrusively found a dynasty. But civilisation was not moving that way. The characters in my other novels were experiencing similar troubles. Howards End is a hunt for a home. India is a Passage for Indians as well as Europeans."
In an article "A View without a Room", published in The Observer, July 27, 1958, p.15, Forster described the characters of this novel as being "created even earlier than 1908. The Italian half of the novel was almost the first piece of fiction I attempted. I laid it aside to write and publish two other novels, and then returned to it and added the English half." In the same article, he imagines how a sequel to the novel might have continued with George and Lucy becoming conscientious objectors during the First World war, the latter running "a more immediate risk by continuing to play Beethoven. Hun music!" Forster envisages their squalid move from Hampstead to Carshalton, and how with a family of three children, they begin "to want a real home -- somewhere in the country where they could take root and unobtrusively found a dynasty. But civilisation was not moving that way. The characters in my other novels were experiencing similar troubles. Howards End is a hunt for a home. India is a Passage for Indians as well as Europeans."