1 - CLISSOLD (1927)

Summary

A review of The World of William Clissold by H. G. Wells, which appeared in the Nation and Athenaeum, 22 January 1927. This essay was republished in France as part of a collection entitled Réflexions sur le franc et sur quelques autres sujets (1928).

Mr Wells and his publisher having adopted an ingenious device by which his newest book1 has been reviewed three times over, perhaps it is too much to write about it again at this late date. But, having read the reviews first and the book afterwards, I am left seriously discontented with what the professional critics have had to say. It is a weakness of modern critics not to distinguish—not to distinguish between one thing and another. Even Mr Wells's choice of form has confused his reviewers. They fail to see what he is after. They reject the good beef which he has offered the British public, because mutton should never be underdone. Or their delicacies are sharpened against his abundance and omnivorous vitality, the broadness and coarseness of the brush with which he sweeps the great canvas which is to catch the attention of hundreds of thousands of readers and sway their minds onward.

Mr Wells here presents, not precisely his own mind as it has developed on the basis of his personal experience and way of life, but—shifting his angle—a point of view based on an experience mainly different from his own, that of a successful, emancipated, semi-scientific, not particularly highbrow, English business man.