E.M. Forster · 1908 · overland

E.M. Forster's 1908 comedy of manners, in which young Lucy Honeychurch is awakened to passion during a holiday in Florence, then must choose between convention and the heart once she is back in genteel Surrey. Light, sunlit and quietly subversive about English repression. The journey is a modest but pivotal one, from England to Italy and home again.

1. 1
   Surrey

   Lucy Honeychurch, a sheltered young Englishwoman, travels from her Surrey home to Italy with her fussy cousin Charlotte as chaperone.

2. 2
   Dover

   At Dover the boat train meets the Channel steamer beneath the white cliffs.

3. 3
   Calais

   Calais, where the long railway journey south through France and over the Alps begins.

4. 4
   Florence

   At a Florence pension she is given a room without a view, and meets the unconventional George Emerson, who unsettles all her certainties.

5. 5
   Fiesole

   On an excursion to the hills of Fiesole, among the violets, George kisses her, and nothing afterward is quite the same.

6. 6
   Calais

   Back to Calais, and the boat home to England.

7. 7
   Dover

   Dover again, and the last train back to Surrey.

8. 8
   Surrey (return)

   Home to Surrey and a respectable engagement, until she finds the courage to refuse a life without a view, and return to Italy and to George.