Tono-Bungay: With an introduction by Paul Torday (Everyman) - Softcover

H.G. Wells

3.43

1,367 ratings by Goodreads

9780460872591: Tono-Bungay: With an introduction by Paul Torday (Everyman)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0460872591 ISBN 13: 9780460872591

Publisher: Everyman, 1994

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George Ponderovo's quiet young life is changed for ever when he is forced to leave home and is apprenticed to his dynamic Uncle Edward in his chemist's shop. Edward, determined to 'strike out', invents a bogus medicine called Tono-Bungay which earns him a vast fortune. George's share of the wealth enables him to live out his fantasies by building an aeroplane. As he witnesses the spectacular rise of the Tono-Bungay empire he contemplates a corrupt English society that allows his uncle to wield so much power. This is the only popular edition of the text to include Wells's final revisions. The notes explain his multi-layered allusions, and the Introduction places the novel in its literary and historical context.

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Review:

A brilliant satire on advertising and the popular press (GUARDIAN)

Wells' greatest literary achievement . . . manages to segue, quite smoothly and methodically, from Dickensian comedy to naturalist love story to sociological commentary to Victorian aeronautical adventure to erotic tragedy and, finally, to a kind of humanist threnody about the past, present and future of England (SALON)

A wide-ranging Condition of England novel that contains some of Wells's most powerful writing, especially its descriptions of London (David Lodge GUARDIAN)

About the Author:

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.

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