Kipps (1905). By: H. G. Wells
Social Novel
Description:... Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. Humorous yet sympathetic, the perceptive social novel is generally regarded as a masterpiece, and it was his own favourite work Plot: The protagonist of the Bildungsroman is Arthur "Artie" Kipps, an illegitimate orphan. In Book I ("The Making of Kipps"), he is raised by his aged aunt and uncle, who keep a little shop in New Romney, on the southern coast of Kent. He attends the Cavendish Academy ("a middle-class school", not a "boarding school", ) in Hastings, in East Sussex. "By inherent nature he had a sociable disposition", and befriends Sid Pornick, the neighbour's boy. Kipps falls in love with Sid's younger sister, Ann. Ann gives him half a sixpence as a token of their love when, at 14, he is apprenticed to the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar, run by Mr. Shalford. However, the Pornicks move away and Kipps forgets Ann. He becomes infatuated with Helen Walshingham, who teaches a wood carving class on Thursday nights. When Chitterlow, an actor and aspiring playwright, meets Kipps by running into him with his bicycle, their encounter turns into an inebriated evening that leads to Kipps being "swapped" (dismissed). However, before he leaves Mr. Shalford's establishment, Chitterlow brings to his attention a newspaper advertisement that leads to an unsuspected inheritance for Kipps from his grandfather of a house and £26,000. In Book II ("Mr. Coote the Chaperon"), Kipps fails in his attempt to adapt to his new social class while he lives in Folkestone. By chance, he meets a Mr. Coote, who undertakes his social education; that leads to renewed contact with Helen Walshingham, and they become engaged. However, the process of bettering himself alienates Kipps more and more, especially since Helen has takes advantage of Kipps's fortune to establish herself and her brother in London society. Chance meetings with Sid and then Ann, now a house servant, lead to a decision to abandon ..................... Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946), usually referred to as H. G. Wells, was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, satire, biography, and autobiography, including even two books on war games. He is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called a "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of airplanes, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction". His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist....
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