Kipps: With an introduction by D.J. Taylor (The Everyman Library) - Softcover

You can enjoy the novel as a jolly yarn about faux pas - there's a bit of Kipps in most of us - but you also sense that Wells found its theme a little close to the bone . . . As social inequality threatens to rise, it's hard not to wonder - despite the happy ending - if Kipps belongs to Britain's future as well as its past (GUARDIAN)

A disguised autobiography, an economic clarion call, a successful attempt to extend the English novel's social range . . . [Kipps] is, above all, a 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)

A Dickensian comedy about one ordinary man's struggle for self-improvement (GUARDIAN)

The novel combines rich comedy and biting social criticism with Dickensian verve (David Lodge Guardian)

H.G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent in 1866. After working as a draper's apprentice and pupil-teacher, he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in 1884, studying under T. H. Huxley. He was awarded a first-class honours degree in biology and resumed teaching but had to retire after a kick from an ill-natured pupil afflicted his kidneys. He worked in poverty in London as a crammer while experimenting in journalism and stories. It was with THE TIME MACHINE (1895) that he had his real breakthrough.