 First UK edition | |
| Author | H. G. Wells |
|---|---|
| Original title | Brynhild, or The Show of Things |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Methuen (UK) Scribner's (US) |
Publication date | 1937 |
| Pages | 302 |
| Preceded by | Star Begotten |
| Followed by | The Camford Visitation |
Brynhild, or The Show of Things is a 1937 novel by H. G. Wells.
Rowland Palace is a novelist married to a distant cousin, Brynhild, a "Quiet Lovely" [1] who is twelve years younger than he. Inordinately sensitive to criticism, Palace has been withdrawing from a wife who is becoming critical of him. When he decides he needs to engage a publicist to cultivate his neglected public image, he hides his plan. The publicist he chooses, Immanuel Cloote, proves to be an agent with imagination and "manifest gusto." [2]
Meanwhile, Brynhild meets and becomes the unique confidant of Alfred Bunter, a rising young novelist of whose popular success Palace is jealous. Bunter confides to Brynhild that he is really David Lewis, from Cardiff, who has left his wife and assumed a new identity as an author. Scarcely has he confided in Brynhild, however, than his true identity is exposed by someone who turns out to be Mr. Cloote, intent on sabotaging Rowland Palace's literary competitors. The plight of Bunter/Lewis elicits Brynhild's sympathies. Brynhild, who had been feeling that she was "too aloof for life," [3] gains a new sense of confidence and self-assurance from her brief affair, and the novel closes with the news that she is with child.
Brynhild is principally a literary satire in which Wells mocks developments in the contemporary literary scene in Great Britain, especially with respect to publicity. [4] The novel also scrutinises marital misunderstanding in a comic vein.
Sir Kingsley William Amis was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social and literary criticism. He is best known for satirical comedies such as Lucky Jim (1954), One Fat Englishman (1963), Ending Up (1974), Jake's Thing (1978) and The Old Devils (1986). His biographer Zachary Leader called Amis "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of the novelist Martin Amis. In 2008, The Times ranked him ninth on a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1908.
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William George Bunter is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, a fictional English public school in Kent, originally published in the boys' weekly story paper The Magnet from 1908 to 1940. The character has appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays and in comic strips.
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