Where Angels Fear to Tread

Where Angels Fear to Tread is E. M. Forster’s first novel, published in 1905, a sharp and sometimes savage comedy of English respectability meeting Italian passion. When the widowed Lilia, sent abroad to keep her out of trouble, scandalises her late husband’s family by marrying a poor young Italian dentist in a Tuscan town, the Herritons dispatch relatives to rescue her, and later to rescue the baby, with results that turn from comedy to tragedy. Forster contrasts the cautious, buttoned-up English with the warmth and spontaneity of Italy, and skewers the snobbery and self-deception of the well-bred. It announced one of the finest novelists of the century. This free PDF and EPUB offers the complete novel.