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The History of Mr. Polly
- Author
- H. G. Wells
- Narrator
- Susan Iannucci
- Publisher
- Voice to Remember
- Publish Date
- 23 May 2023
- Run Time
- 7 hours 53 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
Based on H. G. Wells’s own life experience in the drapery trade, this comic novel presents our anti-hero, Alfred Polly, miserable, timid, and without direction, but with a gift for creating incomprehensible conversational “epithets” to express himself. No one quite understands what he has just said to them … Was it a compliment? An insult? Was it profound or absurd?
The novel opens by telling us, “He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours—every blessed neighbour—and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself.” The story unfolds from Mr. Polly’s early education, his courtship and marriage, to his eventual discovery of purpose in life.
Critics Review
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“Mr. Polly is written with all of Mr. Wells’s customary facility and humor.”
H. L. Mencken, The Smart Set, July 1910
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- H. G. Wells
- Narrator
- Susan Iannucci
- Duration
- 7 hours 53 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 May 2023
- ISBN
- 9798212661324
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Voice to Remember
- Genre
- Classic fiction, Biographical fiction, Fiction: general and literary, Fiction: general and literary
Synopsis
Based on H. G. Wells’s own life experience in the drapery trade, this comic novel presents our anti-hero, Alfred Polly, miserable, timid, and without direction, but with a gift for creating incomprehensible conversational “epithets” to express himself. No one quite understands what he has just said to them … Was it a compliment? An insult? Was it profound or absurd?The novel opens by telling us, “He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours—every blessed neighbour—and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself.” The story unfolds from Mr. Polly’s early education, his courtship and marriage, to his eventual discovery of purpose in life.
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