Mr Britling Sees It Through was published by Cassell and Company in September 1916 and became the best-selling novel in England that year and the next — outselling every other war novel, every romance, every thriller. It captured, with extraordinary precision, the emotional trajectory of the English home front during the first two years of World War I: the initial patriotic excitement, the growing unease, the dawning horror, and the devastation of personal loss.
The Novel
Hugh Britling is a well-known author and public intellectual (transparently based on Wells himself) living in the Essex countryside. An American visitor, Mr. Direck, comes to stay in the summer of 1914. The early chapters — depicting English country life, lawn tennis, amateur theatricals, and vigorous dinner-table argument — are among the most vivid portraits of pre-war England in literature. Then the war comes.
The novel follows Britling through the phases of the conflict. Initially he is enthusiastic — this is the war to end war, the war that will sweep away the old order and create something better. Gradually enthusiasm gives way to confusion, confusion to anger, anger to grief. His son Hugh is killed in action. His secretary’s German fiancé — a decent young man who had been a guest at Britling’s table — is killed on the other side. The waste, the stupidity, the criminal incompetence of the military and political leadership becomes overwhelming.
The final chapters, in which Britling attempts to write a letter of condolence to the dead German’s parents — struggling to find words that transcend nationality and reach toward common humanity — are among the most emotionally powerful things Wells ever wrote.
Themes
The failure of civilization — the novel’s argument is that World War I was a failure of intelligence: the educated, rational, progressive society that Britling represents had failed to prevent the catastrophe, and was now complicit in it.
Grief — the novel is fundamentally about grief: the particular grief of parents who send their children to die in a cause they increasingly doubt.
Internationalism — Britling’s letter to the German parents is the novel’s moral center: an attempt to reach across the lines of conflict and recognize common humanity. This was a radical gesture in 1916.
Collecting Mr Britling Sees It Through
First edition (Cassell and Company, London, 1916): Red cloth binding with gilt lettering. No dust jacket.
Market values:
- Fine copies: $400–$1,000
- Very good: $150–$400
- Good: $50–$150
First American edition (Macmillan, New York, 1916): Published simultaneously. $200–$600.
The enormous first printing makes copies relatively available, but the novel’s significance as a document of the home front during World War I gives it cultural value beyond its book-collecting market.