The History of Mr. Polly [Hardcover]

H.G. WELLS (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: The Press of the Reader's Club; 2nd edition (1941)
• ASIN: B001AGLYZS
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,596,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is it Me?, August 2, 2001

By 

Rodney Buhrsmith (Rosemount, Mn United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: History of Mr Polly (Everyman Paperback Classics) (Paperback)

A friend recommended this book to me after I explained how much fun I was having after leaving work in DC, returning to Minnesota, playing with my kids, joining a mountain biking team and genuinely enjoying my unemplyed status for 9 months. She said it was a philosophical book.

I spent the entire book trying to figure out why she thought of this book after I got through telling her how great my life was at the present. Mr. Polly clearly was not living a great life and always seemed to be on the wrong side of circumstance. It wasn't until the very end of the book that I realized the context my friend applied to my happenings.

The book, for it's strange accents and period vocabulary, was as riveting as any Grisham or Baldacci novel. I don't really know why - but it was. And the last few pages makes one think very hard about the meaning of life, which even for an unemployed child-at-heart, is important to do now and again.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars tragi-comedy, June 22, 2001

By 

Gareth Vaughan (Cape Town, South Africa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: History of Mr Polly (Everyman Paperback Classics) (Paperback)

I finished reading this novella a few days ago. I must first admit that for the first 25 or so pages, I wasn't particulaly tuned into what the book was about. It is, as Wells mentioned, a history, so I was rather thrown at the beginning. Once I got the gist of it, particularly the gist of Mr. Polly and his eccentricities, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The only other Wells book I had read was the Island of Dr. Moreau, which, like his other romantic science-fiction novels he is famous for, was somewhat plot-driven rather than character-driven. This book, is, as the title would lead you to suspect, character-driven.

We begin our read with the bored, frustrated Mr. Polly, what he is feeling and how he deals with his life in general. Then the actual history starts, and Wells's beautiful, if somewhat excessive vocabulary answers the reader's question of who this Mr. Polly is. I found him to a be a very refreshing hero, being rather ordinary, and dealing with the concerns of anyone's life, particularly that of a middle-aged man. He does not "save the day" by perfoming any conventional (or even moral) acts, but this only makes him more real. Mr. Polly's passion for epithet is absolutely delightful, and gave me a great sense of pleasure to watch him go about his transformation.

This was a terriffic, merry little book, with a central character worthy of some of the finest in literature, at least from the limited literature I have read. Don't be fooled by the humorous facade however; there is a deeper message, one which will become relevant at some time in all our lives. It isn't one of Wells's most well known books, but it should be. A superb little gem.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Lost English Comic Novel, February 17, 2006

By 

Fuzzbottle (Freehold, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The History of Mr Polly (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

This one came out of nowhere. An absolutely brilliant comic novel. Like all great comic novels, it's never patronizing. Though the narrator places himself at a distance from Mr. Polly, he's never condescends. The tone is warm and witty, genuinely moving rather than sentimental. It's an honest look at the middle class, cased in a Romantic (as in Knights and Quests) narrative. Really, really great. Definitely worth your time.