E. M. Forster: Rooms and Views

Abstract

The moral and aesthetic inadequacies of art for art’s sake that Lytton Strachey explored in his later Edwardian Apostle papers also figure in E. M. Forster’s third novel. While Strachey was still writing weekly reviews for the Spectator, a note arrived from Forster in November 1908, asking if he could arrange for A Room with a View to be reviewed (LS/pBL). A review duly appeared in the Spectator, and it was much more favourable than the notice of The Longest Journey had been. The anonymous reviewer found A Room with a View by far the best of Forster’s three novels, one in which an earlier disfiguring cynicism had been replaced by ‘a kindlier tolerance’ (EMFCH, p. 118). Some critics still find A Room with a View the best of Forster’s early novels, but most readers would probably agree with Forster’s judgement, half a century later, that though not his favourite novel, ‘it may fairly be called the nicest’ (RV, p. 210).