品牌：H.G. Wells
基本信息
·出版社：Penguin Classics
·页码：272 页码
·出版日：2005年
·ISBN：0141441070
·条码：9780141441078
·版次：New
·装帧：平装
·英语：英语
·丛书名：Penguin Classics
内容简介
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Mr Polly is one of literature's most enduring and universal creations. An ordinary man, trapped in an ordinary life, Mr Polly makes a series of ill-advised choices that bring him to the very brink of financial ruin. Determined not to become the latest victim of the economic retrenchment of the Edwardian age, he rebels in magnificent style and takes control of his life once and for all. AUTHBIO: Known as the 'Father of Science Fiction', H G Wells was responsible for an entirely new genre of writing. It was his bold, daring and hugely innovative books that first introduced readers to the concepts of time travel, invisibility, genetic experimentation and interstellar invasion - ideas that have gone on to inspire future generations and given rise to the entire science fiction industry. Disturbingly accurate in his prophetic writing, H G Wells was also the author of a number of key sociological and historical works.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
作者简介
HG Wells was born in Bromley, Kent in 1866. After working as a draper's apprentice and pupil-teacher, he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in 1884, studying under T H Huxley. He was awarded a first-class honours degree in biology and resumed teaching but had to retire after a kick from an ill-natured pupil afflicted his kidneys. He worked in poverty in London as a crammer while experimenting in journalism and stories. It was with The Time Machine (1895) that he had his real breakthrough.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
编辑推荐
Amazon.com
Fans of H.G. Wells's famous, genre-spawning science fiction novels may be startled to read his less-remembered but once bestsellingThe History of Mr. Polly. Its comically romping narrative voice is worlds away from the stern, melancholy tone ofThe Time Machine. Wells won fame for his apocalyptic, preachy books about the history of the future, but this history is strictly, as Mr. Polly would put it in his creatively cracked version of English, a series of "little accidentulous misadventures."Mr. Alfred Polly is a dyspeptic, miserably married shopkeeper in what he terms that "BeastlySilly Wheeze of a hole!"--Fishbourne, England. He is inclined to spark arguments and slapstick calamity wherever he goes. Education was lost on him: when he left school at 14, "his mind was in much the same state that you would be in, dear reader, if you were operated upon for appendicitis by a well-meaning, boldly enterprising, but rather overworked and underpaid butcher boy, who was superseded towards the climax of the operation by a left-handed clerk of high principles but intemperate habits… the operators had left, so to speak, all their sponges and ligatures in the mangled confusion." Still, Polly's mind burns with eccentric genius, and his thwarted romantic heart beats him senseless. His despair results in the most amusing suicide attempt this side of Lisa Alther's novelKinflicks. We won't spoil the surprise by saying precisely how his scheme misfires--and beware: the introduction gives it away. Note that you can't expect Polly to do anything right, and of course he'll become an inadvertent hero to the whole town. Then he promptly vanishes for further misadventure.Many critics compareMr. Polly's broad social satire to Dickens, but it smacks of Mark Twain and the dialect humor of Finley Peter Dunne'sMr. Dooleytoo. "I think it is one of my good books," Wells opined. What makes it so is Polly's heroic incompetence, his subversion of Edwardian propriety, and his bewildered unawareness that he is a revolutionary.--Tim Appelo--This text refers to thePaperbackedition.
From AudioFile
In addition to his celebrated science fiction, H.G. Wells wrote a number of superb satires, not the least of which is this chronicle of a working-class nebish who, in bungling his own suicide, finds escape from his humdrum existence. The inspired Clive Swift romps sardonically through a very fine cutting of the text. Through his unflagging concentration, brilliant characterizations, flawless comic timing and indefinable genius, Swift not only animates the story, but also creates an entire world to repose it in, one you can see as he speaks. He plays all of the subtext. Not a nuance is missing. Moreover, where Wells in droll and clever, Swift is hir=larious and witty. He takes a fine, if not magnificent, property and embuing it with his own personality, transforms it into something better. His performence of this book is more of an achievement than the book itself. Y.R. Winner of AUDIOFILE's Earphones Award. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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