The New Machiavelli

Did You Know?

• Beatrice Webb called the novel 'very clever in a malicious way' but did not sue, saying it 'lays bare the tragedy of H.G.'s life.'
• Some libraries banned the book and the Spectator did not review it.
• Reviewers were receptive to Wells's political argument but hostile to its sexual message.

Plot summary

A brilliant Cambridge student, he writes political books, marries an heiress, and enters Parliament as a Liberal influenced by Altiora and Oscar Bailey. He later defects to the Conservatives, edits a political weekly, and advocates state endowment of mothers. His career collapses after a love affair with Isabel Rivers, and he abandons wife, party, and country for Italy.

Themes

Politics and sex are the novel's central themes, reflecting Wells's own preoccupations. Biographer David Smith called it Wells's most autobiographical work. The narrative traces the development of political and sexual passion in the protagonist, targeting the artificiality of Victorian and Edwardian morality. A passage condemns the shabby subservience and unreasonable prohibitions of contemporary moral teaching.

Criticism

Vincent Brome saw the novel as the beginning of Wells's retreat as a storyteller, an eruption of self-assertion that would disintegrate the novelist. Joseph Conrad called it a 'master-work,' Upton Sinclair considered it Wells's masterpiece, and D. H. Lawrence found it 'awfully interesting.' Henry James admired it but regarded Wells's use of the first person as an artistic mistake.