Brynhild, or the Show of Things

by H.G. Wells

Rowland Palace is a novelist married to a distant cousin, Brynhild, a "Quiet Lovely" who is twelve years younger than he. Inordinately sensitive to criticism, Palace has been withdrawing from a wife who is becoming critical of him. When he decides he needs to engage a publicist to cultivate his neglected public image, he hides his plan.

Brynhild is principally a literary satire in which Wells mocks developments in the contemporary literary scene in Great Britain, especially with respect to publicity. The novel also scrutinises marital misunderstanding in a comic vein.

Genres: Fiction

302 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Herbert George Wells was born to a working class family in Kent, England. Young Wells received a spotty education, interrupted by several illnesses and family difficulties, and became a draper's apprentice as a teenager. The headmaster of Midhurst Grammar School, where he had spent a year, arranged for him to return as an "usher," or student teacher. Wells earned a government scholarship in 1884, to study biology under Thomas Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science. Wells earned his bachelor of science and doctor of science degrees at the University of London. After marrying his cousin, Isabel, Wells began to supplement his teaching salary with short stories and freelance articles, then books, including The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells created a mild scandal when he divorced his cousin to marry one of his best students, Amy Catherine Robbins. Although his second marriage was lasting and produced two sons, Wells was an unabashed advocate of free (as opposed to "indiscriminate") love. He continued to openly have extra-marital liaisons, most famously with Margaret Sanger, and a ten-year relationship with the author Rebecca West, who had one of his two out-of-wedlock children. A one-time member of the Fabian Society, Wells sought active change. His 100 books included many novels, as well as nonfiction, such as A Modern Utopia (1905), The Outline of History (1920), A Short History of the World (1922), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1932). One of his booklets was Crux Ansata, An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Although Wells toyed briefly with the idea of a "divine will" in his book, God the Invisible King (1917), it was a temporary aberration. Wells used his international fame to promote his favorite causes, including the prevention of war, and was received by government officials around the world. He is best-remembered as an early writer of science fiction and futurism.

He was also an outspoken socialist. Wells and Jules Verne are each sometimes referred to as "The Fathers of Science Fiction". D. 1946.

More: http://philosopedia.org/index.php/H._...

http://www.online-literature.com/well...

http://www.hgwellsusa.50megs.com/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 1 out of 5]

H.G. Wells is one of my top five favourite authors. But he really blew it this time. His later work is quite hit or miss. He seems to have so many ideas and feelings and just can't get them across properly as he's far too sure that his way is the only right way. Bryhild is an odd book. It starts kinda like it wants to be an Evelyn Waugh novel. It's got a weak main hero who writes and lets things happen to him. The book seems like it's trying to be amusing and poke fun at things but it just fails. There are some interesting digressions about the nature of celebrity when celebrities were getting their start in film and how this reflected on authors. But the characters were just dull. The wife character has a crisis at one point when she realises she no longer loves her husband and decides she needs something "meangingful" in her life. Then Wells does the unforgivable thing of saying how women can't do science! Not only are women genetically incapable of being good scientists because they don't have the will, but also that they can't come up with any interesting political ideas and just copy men. It's horrible! And considering he's writing in 1937 obviously so un-true from what had been happening in the past 100 years! It just makes no sense. So for the first time ever I gave up on a Wells novel and skimmed the rest and it proved just as unsatisfactory. :( Very dissapointing!

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read but not one of his better books.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herbert’s 42nd novel, published in 1937, is an amusing squib on public authorship, prophesying the world of the celebrity agent. Mr. Palace is a writer eager to take control of his own public image in the wake of several unflattering photos, soliciting the help of a rogue who seeks to eliminate the competition and has him touring the UK in the manner of a Z-list celeb. Meanwhile, Mr. Palace’s missus, Brynhild, is preoccupied with an awkward young writer who bears a striking resemblance to D.H. Lawrence, whose own wild backstory is comprehensively explored in the novel’s tonally-askew second half. As with most later-era Wells, very little attention is paid to plot or character consistency, the novel flowing freely between whichever character can stimulate the most interesting ruminations. And as another reviewer here observes, Wells’s attitudes to women’s rights and feminism was one of his epic fails as a progressive thinker, this blank spot here evident in his commentary on Brynhild’s identity crisis.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this many years ago. It is average. This kind of thing has been done, many times, by better authors than Wells. By quite a few worse authors, too.