To illuminate the changing times, Forster throws together three vastly dissimilar classes of people: the Schlegels, Helen and Margaret, educated, compassionate and independently wealthy; the Wilcoxes, nouveau riche Empire builders; and Leonard Bast, an ambitious but struggling bank clerk.

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) is a novel by English author E.M. Forster. The work was Forster's first novel, and its success helped launch his lengthy and critically acclaimed career as a writer of literary fiction. Where Angels Fear to Tread, the title is drawn from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711), is a moving meditation on class, gender, social convention, and the grieving process. Following the death of her husband, a widow named...

This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the...

Set in the elegant Edwardian world of Cambridge undergraduate life, this story by a master novelist introduces us to Maurice Hall when he is fourteen. We follow him through public school and Cambridge, and into his father's firm. In a highly structured society, Maurice is a conventional young man in almost every way-except that he is homosexual. Written during 1913 and 1914, immediately after Howards End, and not published until 1971, Maurice was...

In Edwardian England, two well educated sisters, each find different ways to deal with the constrainsts of society.

Adela Quested is a plucky young woman who journeys from England with the free-spirited Mrs. Moore. Flouting convention, the two women accompany the handsome Dr. Azis on a tour of the mysterious Marabar Caves. But things turn ugly when Adela returns scratched and bloodied from the expedition. As British authorities urge her to press charges against Aziz, the line separating truth and fantasy begin to blur.

Lucy Honeychurch and her nervous chaperone embark on a grand tour of Italy. Alongside sweeping landscapes, Lucy encounters a suspect group of characters (socialist Mr. Emerson and his working-class son George, in particular) who both surprise and intrigue her. When piqued interest turns to potential romance, Lucy is whisked home to England, where her attention turns to Cecil Vyse. But now, with a well-developed appetite for adventure, will Lucy make...