Where Angels Fear to Tread

A respectable English widow. A charming Italian dentist. And the baby that destroyed a family.

E.M. Forster's first novel is a razor-sharp comedy of manners—and a surprisingly tender tragedy about the people who dare to step outside their proper place.

The young widow Lilia Herriton, bored and suffocated by English provincial life, travels to Italy and promptly falls in love with Gino, a handsome, passionate, and entirely unsuitable Italian dentist. Her horrified in-laws—the relentlessly proper Philip Herriton and his iron-willed sister Harriet—consider the matter closed when Lilia dies in childbirth. But the baby survives. And when the Herritons discover that Gino intends to raise the child as an Italian, they launch a rescue mission that goes disastrously, violently wrong. What begins as a comedy of English embarrassment ends in a moment of shocking tragedy—and a strange, unexpected grace.

This is Forster at his most witty and unsettling: a novel about the collision between English repression and Italian passion, between what is proper and what is true. Where Angels Fear to Tread announces a major talent—and a writer who would never stop asking uncomfortable questions.

• Forster's dazzling debut novel, published in 1905

• Explores themes of cultural clash, class snobbery, and the cost of living authentically

• A perfect entry point for readers new to Forster, combining his trademark wit with genuine emotional power

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

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A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears—or the perfect gift for anyone who has ever dared to love where angels fear to tread.

About the Author

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) was an English novelist, essayist, and librettist, best known for his novels exploring class, hypocrisy, and the struggle for human connection. His major works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910), and A Passage to India (1924), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Forster was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years. After 1924, he published no further novels, devoting himself instead to criticism and biography, including the posthumously published Maurice (1971), a groundbreaking novel about homosexual love written in 1913–14. Forster was a humanist, a secular thinker, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1969.