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George Ponderevo, the son of a housekeeper on a great country estate, tells how his uncle Edward, a small-town chemist with big dreams, invents a patent…
George Ponderevo, the son of a housekeeper on a great country estate, tells how his uncle Edward, a small-town chemist with big dreams, invents a patent medicine called Tono-Bungay, 'slightly injurious rubbish' sold through brilliant advertising. The tonic makes them enormously rich; the uncle becomes a famous financier, buys newspapers and builds a vast country house, while George turns to engineering and flying machines, until the whole empire of credit begins to collapse.
Context and significance
H. G. Wells published the novel in 1909 and called it the most finished novel he was ever likely to write. It is a sharp, comic satire of advertising, speculation and the decay of the old English social order. It pairs well with Wells's The History of Mr Polly and The Time Machine.
About the author
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was the son of a failing shopkeeper and a lady's maid, and worked as a draper's apprentice before winning a scholarship to study science under T. H. Huxley, Darwin's great defender. Between 1895 and 1901 he wrote the scientific romances that founded modern science fiction, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man among them.
He went on to write social novels, popular history such as A Short History of the World and books urging world government, met Lenin and Roosevelt, and imagined tanks, air war and the atomic bomb before they existed. Few writers have thought so hard about the future.