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Alfred Polly, a dreamy, shy shopkeeper of thirty-seven who loves books and invents comic words of his own, has been miserable for fifteen years in a small…
Alfred Polly, a dreamy, shy shopkeeper of thirty-seven who loves books and invents comic words of his own, has been miserable for fifteen years in a small seaside town, with a failing shop, chronic indigestion and a discontented wife. One day he decides to end it all by setting fire to the shop and cutting his throat, but the fire turns into a heroic rescue, and instead of dying he simply walks away from his old life, to find happiness as a handyman at a riverside inn, where he must face its terrifying bully, Uncle Jim.
Context and significance
H. G. Wells published this comic novel in 1910, drawing on his own unhappy years as a draper's apprentice. It is a cheerful fable about the right to escape a wasted life, and it remains one of his most loved books. Then turn to Tono-Bungay 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.