DISCOVER A DIFFERENT SIDE TO H. G. WELLS . . .
H.G. Wells's social tales caused a sensation when they were first published in the early twentieth century. Piercingly funny, yet sympathetic, and containing a cast of colourful characters, they have drawn comparisons to the works of Dickens and Evelyn Waugh.
From the hapless Kipps, who is plunged into a world of high society, the rules of which he fails to understand, to Mr Polly, the draper, desperate to escape his shop and nagging wife, to Ann Veronica, a young woman rebelling against her father's stern patriarchal rule, these satires of Edwardian mores are both horribly funny and provoke questions about the class system and opportunities for social reform.
The social novels include LOVE AND MR LEWISHAM (1900), KIPPS (1905), ANN VERONICA (1909), TONO-BUNGAY (1909) and THE HISTORY OF MR POLLY (1910).
Read MoreA horribly funny book, written by a man who still believed that the most effective way of attacking something was to laugh at it - D.J. Taylor on KIPPSA Dickensian comedy about one ordinary man's struggle for self-improvement - GUARDIANThe novel combines rich comedy and biting social criticism with Dickensian verve - David Lodge, GUARDIAN