Kipps

A draper's assistant takes a cycling holiday and collides, literally, with a young woman running away from home. A comic road novel drawn straight from the shop counter Wells escaped.

H. G. Wells

A poor science student maps out his whole career on a schedule pinned to the wall, and then falls in love. The first novel where Wells wrote about his own life rather than the future.

H. G. Wells

A worthless patent medicine is turned into a national fortune by advertising alone. The most ambitious of Wells' realist novels and a still accurate account of how commercial bubbles work.

H. G. Wells

A young woman walks out of her father's house to study biology and live on her own terms. The book was denounced from pulpits and banned from libraries when it appeared.

H. G. Wells

A miserable shopkeeper decides to burn down his shop and walk away from his life. Wells' funniest novel, and the one that most clearly says what he thought of respectable failure.

H. G. Wells