Still, I do think it’s hard not to read the book and not be a little dazzled by Forster’s accomplishments at age 26.īut what is Where Angels Fear to Tread all about? A young widow, Lila Herriton travels to Tuscany so that she may escape the oppressive social confines set by her late husband’s family. Some of these elements are more incipient than present, or emerge in inchoate forms: he would perfect these in later, greater novels. Forster could write at 26, with such confidence, and such assurance, the elements that would make his later novels so admired: his empathy, his detailed character studies, his profound understanding of Victorian mores in all its contradictions and an abiding passion for art (architecture, painting, music and-the most beautiful of all-the natural world) itself. When you read the novel, you are impressed that E.M. It’s a reflection of his famous modesty that his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), is a mere 140 pages, but this is not to say that the novel itself is trivial or insubstantial. But that’s one of the things I love about Forster: his taste, his modesty prevented him from writing novels that are moribund by excess, and so they remain (in my mind), exquisitely figured, and just so. Like Jane Austen, Forster wrote only six novels in his lifetime, all of modest length - if not by scope. For one thing, I think it’s an entirely achievable project (in the future I might regret this statement, but not just yet). Forster’s (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) novels in chronological order for quite some time. I’ve been considering reading all of E.M.

Where angels fear to tread forster