This charming comedy of manners is an enjoyable exploration of one of Forster’s favourite themes – the “undeveloped heart” of the English middle classes. Undoubtedly his most optimistic novel, and described by the author as his “nicest” (though also “rather slight”) it meanders along pleasantly, following heroine Lucy Honeychurch through a tour of Italy with her exasperatingly prim cousin Charlotte, and then back home to Surrey, where she becomes engaged to the supercilious aesthete, Cecil Vyse.

Comedy is at the heart of "A Room With a View" – indeed, writing in the introduction to this edition, Malcolm Bradbury suggests that “the Comic Muse… is perhaps the really important heroine of Forster’s sunny novel.” Forster finds obvious pleasure in affectionately satirising his archetypally middle-class English characters, whether abroad or at home, just as he evidently enjoys toying with his themes of views, sights, perception, the seen and the unseen, and capturing the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Florence with his distinctive lightness of touch.

Yet beneath this playful and light-hearted mood, there are more powerful forces at work, leading us, like Lucy herself, to suspect that we are dealing “not with rooms and views, but with – well with something quite different”. Beneath the surface, various conflicts and contrasts play out alongside the struggle between social convention and passion which sits at the centre of this novel, symbolised by the juxtaposition of romantic, chaotic Italy with respectable suburban England. Finally, of course, in spite of the best efforts of ‘proper’ Edwardian society, it is love and passion which finally triumph for Lucy, but we are left in no doubt that "A Room With a View" is much more than a likable and gracefully-written romance. Ultimately, it is an intriguing and penetrating social commentary, revealing much about Forster’s liberal politics, as well as his unshakeable belief in the vitality of the human spirit.

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