 Title page for The New Machiavelli (1911) | |
| Author | H. G. Wells |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Published | 1911 (Lane, Bodley Head) |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 472 |
| Text | The New Machiavelli at Wikisource |
The New Machiavelli is a 1911 novel by H. G. Wells that was serialised in the English Review in 1910. Because its plot notoriously derived from Wells's affair with Amber Reeves and satirised Beatrice and Sidney Webb, it was "the literary scandal of its day." [1]
The New Machiavelli purports to be written in the first person by its protagonist, Richard "Dick" Remington, who has a lifelong passion for "statecraft" and who dreams of recasting the social and political form of the English nation. Remington is a brilliant student at Cambridge, writes several books on political themes, marries an heiress and enters parliament as a Liberal influenced by the socialism of Altiora and Oscar Bailey, a couple easily recognisable as the Webbs, only to go over to the Conservatives. Remington undertakes the editing of an influential political weekly and is returned to parliament on a platform advocating the state endowment of mothers but his career is wrecked by his love affair with a brilliant young Oxford graduate, Isabel Rivers. When rumours of their affair begin to circulate, Remington tries to break it off but then resolves to abandon wife, career, party and country to live in Italy, where he writes the apologia pro vita sua that the novel constitutes.[ citation needed ]
The novel's themes are politics and sex, both abiding preoccupations of the author. Biographer David Smith called The New Machiavelli "Wells's most autobiographical novel". [2] The development of political and sexual passion in the protagonist is traced in intricate detail. The artificiality of Victorian and Edwardian morality is the novel's chief target: "Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The very savages in Australia initiate their children better than the English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a view of what they call morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as the meanest discretion, an abject submission to unreasonable prohibitions! meek surrender of mind and body to the dictation of pedants and old women and fools. We weren't taught—we were mumbled at!" [3]
Vincent Brome wrote that The New Machiavelli was "the beginning of the retreat of Wells the story-teller. ... It was the first ominous eruption of those magnificent moments of self-assertion which were to disintegrate the novelist in him." [4] The novel has had many prestigious admirers, Joseph Conrad called it a "master-work", Upton Sinclair considered it Wells's masterpiece and D. H. Lawrence called it "awfully interesting"; another admirer, Henry James, regarded Wells's use of the first person an artistic mistake. [5]
Beatrice Webb called The New Machiavelli "very clever in a malicious way" but did not sue, saying that the novel "lays bare the tragedy of H.G.'s life—his aptitude for 'fine thinking' and even 'good feeling' and yet his total incapacity for decent conduct." [6] Some libraries banned the book and the Spectator did not review it. [7] Reviewers were receptive to Wells's political argument but hostile to its sexual message.
The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution was published in 1928 by H. G. Wells, when he was 62 years old. It was revised and expanded in 1930 with the additional subtitle A Second Version of This Faith of a Modern Man Made More Explicit and Plain. In 1931 a further revised edition appeared titled What Are We to Do with Our Lives?. A final version appeared in 1933 under its original title. Many of its ideas are anticipated in Wells's 1926 novel The World of William Clissold.
Tono-Bungay is a realist semiautobiographical novel written by H. G. Wells and first published in book form in 1909. It has been called "arguably his most artistic book". It had been serialised before book publication, both in the United States, in The Popular Magazine, beginning in the issue of September 1908, and in Britain, in The English Review, beginning in the magazine's first issue in December 1908.
The History of Mr. Polly is a 1910 comic novel by H. G. Wells.
A Modern Utopia is a 1905 novel by H. G. Wells.
New Worlds for Old (1908), which appeared in some later editions with the subtitle "A Plain Account of Modern Socialism," was one of several books and pamphlets that H. G. Wells wrote about the socialist future in the period 1901–1908, while he was engaged in an effort to reform the Fabian Society.
This Misery of Boots is a 1907 political tract by H. G. Wells advocating socialism. Published by the Fabian Society, This Misery of Boots is the expansion of a 1905 essay with the same name. Its five chapters condemn private property in land and means of production and calls for their expropriation by the state "not for profit, but for service."
Mr. Britling Sees It Through is H. G. Wells's "masterpiece of the wartime experience in south eastern England." The novel was published in September 1916.
The World of William Clissold is a 1926 novel by H. G. Wells published initially in three volumes. The first volume was published in September to coincide with Wells's sixtieth birthday, and the second and third volumes followed at monthly intervals.
Meanwhile is a 1927 novel by H. G. Wells set in an Italian villa early in 1926.
The Future in America: A Search After Realities is a 1906 travel essay by H. G. Wells recounting his impressions from the first of half a dozen visits he would make to the United States. The book consists of fifteen chapters and a concluding "envoy".
First and Last Things is a 1908 work of philosophy by H. G. Wells setting forth his beliefs in four "books" entitled "Metaphysics," "Of Belief," "Of General Conduct," and "Some Personal Things." Parts of the book were published in the Independent Magazine in July and August 1908. Wells revised the book extensively in 1917, in response to his religious conversion, but later published a further revision in 1929 that restored much of the book to its earlier form. Its main intellectual influences are Darwinism and certain German thinkers Wells had read, such as August Weismann. The pragmatism of William James, who had become a friend of Wells, was also an influence.
The Passionate Friends is a 1913 coming of age novel by H. G. Wells detailing the life and travels of a young man. It is notable as the first introduction of Wells's notion of an "open conspiracy" of individuals to achieve a world state.
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman is a 1914 novel by H. G. Wells.
An Englishman Looks at the World is a 1914 essay collection by H. G. Wells containing journalistic pieces written between 1909 and 1914. The book consists of twenty-six pieces ranging from five to sixty-two pages in length. An American edition was published the same year by Harper and Brothers under the title Social Forces in England and America.
Bealby: A Holiday is a 1915 comic novel by H. G. Wells.
War and the Future (1917) is a work of war propaganda by H. G. Wells that was published in North America under the title Italy, France, and Britain at War. Wells would have preferred the title The War of Ideas, but his publisher over-ruled him. Except for the opening piece, its chapters were published as articles in the press. Though proclaiming early in the volume that "I avow myself an extreme Pacifist," Wells staunchly supported Britain's war against Germany "in the hope that so we and the world may be freed from the German will-to-power and all its humiliating and disgusting consequences henceforth for ever."
The Undying Fire, a 1919 novel by H. G. Wells, is a modern retelling of the story of Job. Like the Book of Job, it consists of a prologue in heaven, an exchange of speeches with four visitors, a dialogue between the protagonist and God, and an epilogue in which the protagonist's fortunes are restored. The novel is dedicated "to All Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses and every Teacher in the World."
The Bulpington of Blup is a 1932 novel by H. G. Wells. It is a character study analyzing the psychological sources of resistance to Wellsian ideology, and was influenced by Wells's acquaintance with Carl Gustav Jung and his ideas.
The Holy Terror is a 1939 work by H. G. Wells that is in part an analysis of fascism and in part a utopian novel.
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought, generally known as Anticipations, was written by H.G. Wells at the age of 34. He later called the book, which became a bestseller, "the keystone to the main arch of my work." His most recent biographer, however, calls the volume "both the starting point and the lowest point in Wells's career as a social thinker."
The New Machiavelli public domain audiobook at LibriVox