The History of Mr Polly was published by Thomas Nelson and Sons in April 1910 and is the novel in which Wells achieves something he rarely managed: pure happiness. Alfred Polly is a small shopkeeper in a small town, married to a woman he does not love, trapped in a life of quiet desperation — and then he burns down his shop (accidentally setting fire to the entire row), fakes his death in the confusion, and walks away from everything. He ends up at the Potwell Inn, a riverside pub run by a fat, contented woman, where he lives out his days as a handyman, fishing, gardening, and fighting off the occasional visit from Uncle Jim, the inn’s resident menace.
The Novel
The first half of the novel is comedy tinged with despair. Polly is one of literature’s great misfits: a man of imagination and verbal inventiveness (he mangles language beautifully — “Raleeleigh,” “Dolilokahead”) trapped in a world that values only commerce and respectability. His marriage to Miriam, conducted out of obligation after his father’s death leaves him with a small inheritance, is a masterpiece of unhappy domestic fiction — not dramatic misery, but the slow erosion of spirit that comes from living with someone you have nothing to say to.
The second half is liberation. Polly’s escape — burning his shop, walking away, becoming nobody — is one of the great fantasies of English literature: the dream that you can simply stop being who you are and start again. That Wells makes it convincing, even plausible, is the novel’s triumph.
The Potwell Inn is pastoral England at its most idealized: the river, the food, the drowsy afternoons. But Wells keeps it from sentimentality through Uncle Jim, a genuine threat whose periodic appearances give the idyll its dramatic tension.
Themes
Escape — the novel’s central argument is that it is possible, if you are brave enough, to walk away from a life that is killing you. This is not irresponsible; it is necessary. Polly’s wife collects his life insurance and is better off without him. Everyone benefits.
Language — Polly’s malapropisms are not stupidity but creativity: a mind too lively for the vocabulary it has been given. His love of words is his one resistance to the deadening world of petty commerce.
Class — like Kipps, this is a novel about the lower middle class, that most English of subjects. Polly is not poor enough to be romantic or rich enough to be interesting; he is merely respectable, and respectability is the enemy.
Collecting The History of Mr Polly
First edition (Thomas Nelson and Sons, London, 1910): Green cloth binding with decorative blind-stamping.
Market values:
- Fine copies: $600–$1,500
- Very good: $200–$600
- Good: $75–$200
First American edition (Duffield & Company, New York, 1909): Preceded the English edition. $300–$800.
The novel was filmed in 1949 with John Mills in the title role and again for BBC television. George Orwell considered it Wells’s best comic novel.