Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) was E. M. Forster's first published novel. Prefiguring A Room with a View, it is a social comedy of Anglo-Italian manners in ten chapters told by Forster's characteristic third-person narrator. The title, suggested by a friend of Forster's, is taken from Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism. The novel is set in England and Italy with the contrast between the two countries and cultures a dominant theme. The English setting is Sawston, a suburb of London, while the mediterranean setting is the small Tuscan town of Monteriano, which was also the name Forster wanted to give to the novel. The published title, however, also plays with the idea of the English as a race of inexperienced

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Published 08 January 2001

Citation: Childs, Peter. "Where Angels Fear to Tread". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 January 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8755, accessed 20 November 2009.]