With an Introduction by Jonathan Wild, University of Edinburgh. These comic novels will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped by circumstance. Their central characters, Artie Kipps and Alfred Polly, are prisoners of their modest social class, limited education, dull work, and sterile relationships. In Wells' hands they break out of the cages that society has constructed for them, learning after bitter experience the truth that 'if the world does not please you, you can change it'. This message, a revolutionary one in its day for the growing army of Edwardian clerks and drapers, is handled with a rich comedy and freshness that belies its deadly seriousness. Wells is at his very best here in exposing and satirising the unequal nature of British society while preparing the ground for its reformation. AUTHOR: H. G. Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) is famously often referred to as 'the father of science fiction' but Wells's phenomenal imagination ranged far and wide and included works of comic social realism. Such is Wells's facility with story-telling that well over a century after their publication, that his stories are as fresh and compelling to us today as they would have been when his initial readers first turned their pages, often in astonishment and frequently in amusement.