H. G. Wells
![Tono-Bungay H. G. Wells]( "Tono-Bungay H. G. Wells")
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By: Bison Books
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Social-Fiction, not Science-Fiction 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.
Having read H.G. Wells' classics WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, THE TIME MACHINE, and THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, I looked forward to reading what is often claimed to be his "best" work. TONO-BUNGAY is completely different than any of his Sci-Fi classics. TONO-BUNGAY is more of a study of class structure and class struggle in England during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The story follows the life of a young man, George, and his Uncle Edward. Edward invents an elixir called TONO-BUNGAY and hires his nephew George to help build the company. As the book goes George and Edward become quite wealthy. Throughout the book George makes numerous comments on his varying places on the social ladder. It seems that no matter how wealthy George becomes, he will never be accepted in certain circles because he is newly rich and not "old money." The story is well written and is generally easy to follow. I would, however, recomm! end the World's Classics edition of this book (published by Oxford U. Press and available from Amazon.Com) because there are some instances in which Wells makes comments about European literature, art, languages, colleges and phrases that may be of little meaning to the average reader, but for the six pages of end notes provided in the World's Classics edition. The World's Classics edition also claims to be the most accurate edition of the story, taking into account all of Wells' revisions of the story, many of which were made after the book was initially published in 1909 (TONO-BUNGAY was revised by Wells and re-released in 1925).
Editorial Review:
Tono-Bungay (1909), the bridge between H.G. Wells 's comic novels and his novels of ideas, was regarded by Wells himself as perhaps his most ambitious work of fiction. It was, he said, "the novel as I imagined it, on Dickens-Thackeray lines." The hero-narrator, George Ponderevo, begins life in the servants' hall of a great house, Bladesover, earns a pharmaceutical society scholarship, and is apprenticed to his uncle Edward Ponderevo, a druggist in a small country town. Uncle Teddy concocts a patent medicine, Tono-Bungay ("The Secret of Vigour"), and together they build the colossal Tono-Bungay property "out of human hope and a credit for bottles and printing." The meteoric career of Uncle Teddy, Napoleon of commerce and precursor of twentieth-century hucksters, is narrated against the background of his nephew's life.
