The History of Mr Polly H G Wells Books
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Fans of H.G. Wells's famous, genre-spawning science fiction novels may be startled to read his less-remembered but once bestselling The History of Mr. Polly. Its comically romping narrative voice is worlds away from the stern, melancholy tone of The Time Machine. Wells won fame for his apocalyptic, preachy books about the history of the future, but this history is strictly, as Mr. Polly would put it in his creatively cracked version of English, a series of "little accidentulous misadventures.”
Mr. Alfred Polly is a dyspeptic, miserably married shopkeeper in what he terms that "Beastly Silly Wheeze of a hole!"--Fishbourne, England. He is inclined to spark arguments and slapstick calamity wherever he goes. Education was lost on him when he left school at 14, "his mind was in much the same state that you would be in, dear reader, if you were operated upon for appendicitis by a well-meaning, boldly enterprising, but rather overworked and underpaid butcher boy, who was superseded towards the climax of the operation by a left-handed clerk of high principles but intemperate habits… the operators had left, so to speak, all their sponges and ligatures in the mangled confusion." Still, Polly's mind burns with eccentric genius, and his thwarted romantic heart beats him senseless. His despair results in the most amusing suicide attempt this side of Lisa Alther's novel Kinflicks. We won't spoil the surprise by saying precisely how his scheme misfires--and beware the introduction gives it away. Note that you can't expect Polly to do anything right, and of course he'll become an inadvertent hero to the whole town. Then he promptly vanishes for further misadventure.
Many critics compare Mr. Polly's broad social satire to Dickens, but it smacks of Mark Twain and the dialect humor of Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley too. "I think it is one of my good books," Wells opined. What makes it so is Polly's heroic incompetence, his subversion of Edwardian propriety, and his bewildered unawareness that he is a revolutionary.
The History of Mr Polly H G Wells Books
I wanted to help the rating of this book. This is one of the most readable, most human, most entertaining history books I have ever read. If I had been given this to read in school, I would have been much more interested in History as a kid. If you are in the market for a single volume survey of history, this is EASILY the best one out there.Product details
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The History of Mr Polly H G Wells Books Reviews
I loved this story when I first read it in 1960, and I loved even more this time around,
Alfred Polly, the subject of this fine comic novel, is an average middle-class Englishman with an average education that never really caught on, a penchant for high-sounding expressions that he hilariously mispronounces or makes up ("the Shoveacious Cult" for "sunny young men of an abounding and elbowing energy,” is one of them), and great curiosity about life but little ambition for it. In other words, he is a man with a badly muddled sense of reality who, sick of the life that he leads, burns down the outfitter’s shop that he has come to hate, gives his wife half of the insurance money, and disappears, exchanging his “acceptable” life as a shopkeeper for that of a wanderer.
Mr. Polly is a classic antihero, the kind of person who just never fits in, lives on the fringes, yet is relatively happy once he ditches the life he hates and moves on, a wanderer. As he muses toward the end of the book, he says ”One seems to start in life expecting something. And it doesn't happen. And it doesn't matter. One starts with ideas that things are good and things are bad – and it hasn't much relation to what is good and what is bad. . . . There's something that doesn't mind us. It isn't what we try to get that we get, it isn't the good we think we do is good. What makes us happy isn't our trying, what makes others happy isn't our trying. There's a sort of character people like and stand up for and a sort they won't. You got to work at it and take the consequences.” First published in 1910, it is a story that lives on.
Although these volumes stop after the second world war, touching upon the Korean War and the early days of the Cold War, as a historical reference up to that time, it is the best chronological compilation I have come across so far. These days, with so many films and books focusing upon different rulers throughout history, it is nice to have a reference to go to where one can put everything in historical context.
This book is a must for all history buffs.
This, as has been referenced by other reviewers, is one of HG Wells few comic (tragico) novels. We begin the work, introduced to Mr. Alfred Polly while deeply enveloped in his current condition misery, disdain, at a loss because his work, wife, life, heart and neighbors are abysmally terrible in all of their facets!
An intriguing HG Wells work, not of the sci-fi variety, which details a man's struggle to find himself and get along with his world. Existential rending of life, love and work, purpose hunting, going to extreme measures to either right or prevent mistakes... Mr. Polly is a demure risk taker. Burning it down to hide afterward – a criminal deemed / perceived a hero, and suffering for it and each strike against him further more.
We meet a man who was pushed into his current career path – a men's outfitter, essentially (think 'You'll like the way you look.', only... maybe not?) who retails (no pun intended) his path to near absolute insolvency at age thirty-five-and-a-half. The work then begins a digression, more aptly a regression before coming again to progression at Polly's current age before again going beyond and into the future (current).
Between the backward and forward we learn how Mr. Polly came to hate, loathe, despise all of his life circumstances. How it was that he wound up with his cousin-wife (not uncommon in earlier times), Miriam, his previous training in the craft he so despised now and then toward the future tense what he did to change it (as underhanded as it is) and where it led his mind, how it placated his mind and shaped his future.
SPOILERS
Apprenticed to a man, many men, actually, that he didn't like and feeling stuck in a carreer calling that he surely didn't like, Mr. Polly soon became adept enough at his work to romp the local towns. In doing so he had many encounters with his cousin's who lived a bikes-ride away. Becoming more and more familiar with them he settled on the notion of marrying Miriam. As time progresses she, naturally, changed (while he may feign he didn't) and the relationship soon became one of disputation – he'd work his job, she'd complain he didn't work hard enough, he disliked her because she never did anything – not even keep-up the house.
One day Mr. Polly connives a way out of his marriage. He'll slit his throat and burn his house down while Miriam is at church. Mr. Polly succeeds in alighting the house... but when his trousers catch aflame his memory to... or, inclination towards, cutting his throat disappears. Instead he tromps the flame on his pants and saves his neighbors aged mother, after all of which he is considered the local hero.
Having survived this event, but still desiring to get out of the marriage and all situations associated to Miriam – Mr. Polly runs off. Leaves. Vacates. Escapes. Mr. Polly basically takes upon himself the life of a tramp.
Arriving at Pottswell Inn, Mr. Polly takes on the position of steward – doing all that is necessary and within his means around the Inn for the single, female, and threatened (by her nephew) proprietor. Mr. Polly encounters a few existential dilemma where it concerns 'Uncle Jim' but after a lengthy and, somewhat violent, dispute Jim disappears... one will find this tied into a later visit to Miriam by Mr. Polly after he'd been deemed deceased for a long while – the body of Jim wore the clothes of Polly when he was found drowned in the river, his person was indistinguishable from any other however, in that he'd been river-ridden for so long.
Not desiring to return to a life he'd left behind long ago, and quite content with the one that he'd established, Mr. Polly tells Miriam 'I'm a visitant from another world.' (2736) and begs her to forget he was ever there (which for the sake of the insurance, she does).
Unlike another version of this book I bought, this one was proofread before being published, and is therefore a pleasure to read. The book itself is excellent, full of interesting historical analysis and speculation on H.G. Wells' part. (This particular edition covers human history through 1920.) I can't imagine anyone will read this book and agree with everything Wells has to say, but he couches his arguments in such an interesting and insightful way that he makes you examine your assumptions and beliefs. The Outline of History is an excellent reminder that the human race sprang from common roots and challenges. I can't think of a better book to broaden one's horizons.
I am loving this book--so I bought HG Wells Short History of the World, too.
The Outline is outstanding, I've read lots of history books--including Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (an all-time favorite that I frequently give as a gift), but explanations in The Outline are often simpler and clearer than many others. At 1,000 pages you'd think there'd be a mass of extraneous details but the book covers so much ground that it never gets bogged down. If you need more, HG Wells also wrote companion books that delve deeper into related scientific areas.
I wanted to help the rating of this book. This is one of the most readable, most human, most entertaining history books I have ever read. If I had been given this to read in school, I would have been much more interested in History as a kid. If you are in the market for a single volume survey of history, this is EASILY the best one out there.
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