Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1928 – 2013

Merchant Ivory and Oscar-winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has died at 85 years old. It truly is the end of the era, reports USA Today’s Susan Wloszczyna:

There was Merchant. There was Ivory. But the producer-director team whose names were synonymous with a style of genteel literary-based British period piece that reached its class-conscious pinnacle with 1986’s A Room With a View and 1992’s Howards End would not have existed without the vivid words of screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

She won Oscars for two E.L. Forster adaptations: A Room With a View, about a young Englishwoman’s life-changing holiday in Italy; and Howards End, a heart-rending look at Edwardian-era class differences. She was also nominated for 1993’s The Remains of the Day.