Love and Mr Lewisham

Love and Mr Lewisham is an 1899 novel set in the 1880s by H. G. Wells. It was among his first outside the science fiction genre. Wells took considerable pains over the manuscript and said of it that "the writing was an altogether more serious undertaking than I have ever done before."^[1] He later included it in a 1933 anthology entitled Stories of Men and Women in Love.

Plot summary

At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Lewisham is an 18-year-old teacher at a boys' school in Sussex, earning forty pounds a year. He meets and falls in love with Ethel Henderson, who is paying a visit to relatives. His involvement with her causes him to lose his position, but he is unable to find her when he moves to London.

After a two-and-one-half-year break in the action, Mr. Lewisham is in his third year of study at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington. He has becomes a socialist, declaring his politics with a red tie, and is an object of interest to Alice Heydinger, an older student. But chance brings him together again with his first love at a séance. Ethel's stepfather, Mr. Chaffery, is a spiritualist charlatan, and Mr. Lewisham is determined to extricate her from association with his dishonesty. They marry, but Mr. Lewisham is forced to abandon his plans for a brilliant scientific career followed by a political ascent.

Reception

Love and Mr Lewisham was well received, and C. F. G. Masterman told Wells that he believed that along with Kipps it was the novel most likely to endure.^[2] Richard Arman Gregory compared the novel to Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.^[3]

References

External links

• Love and Mr Lewisham public domain audiobook at LibriVox

External links

• Love and Mr Lewisham at Project Gutenberg.