Based on H. G. Wells’s own life experience in the drapery trade, this comic novel presents our anti-hero, Alfred Polly, miserable, timid, and without direction, but with a gift for creating incomprehensible conversational “epithets” to express himself. No one quite understands what he has just said to them … Was it a compliment? An insult? Was it profound or absurd?
The novel opens by telling us, “He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours—every blessed neighbour—and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself.” The story unfolds from Mr. Polly’s early education, his courtship and marriage, to his eventual discovery of purpose in life.
Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was born in Bromley, England, to a working class family. His first novel, The Time Machine, was an instant success and Wells produced a series of science fiction novels which pioneered ideas about the future. His later work focused on satire and social criticism. Wells forecasted the rise of major cities and suburbs, economic globalization, and aspects of future military conflicts.View all by H. G. Wells
