Description

Part ghost story and part science fiction tale, Wells’s The Invisible Man begins with the arrival of a mysterious, shrouded stranger in the small village of Iping. A man heavily clothed with hats, bandages and gloves takes a room at a local inn, and quickly unnerves the townspeople with his strange laboratory experiments and odd behavior. A series of burglaries take place in the village, and with her suspicion aroused, the innkeeper Mrs. Hall confronts the stranger. Removing all of his clothing and bandages, the man reveals that there is nothing underneath and that he is invisible. Terrified, Mrs. Hall flees and the police attempt to catch the man, but he throws off his clothes and thus eludes capture. After running from town to town, breaking into houses and stealing things along the way, the invisible man encounters a former associate, Dr. Kemp. The invisible man, who we finally learn is called Griffin, was a brilliant medical student of Dr. Kemp’s at the university. Griffin reveals that after leaving the university he began to experiment with light refractions in an attempt to make things invisible—and that now he cannot reverse his own invisibility. As Griffin grows increasingly unstable, he begins to feel self-delusions of grandeur and invincibility that lead to this tale’s shocking conclusion.

About the Author

H.G. Wells (1866-1946) began life in a humble British home, as the son of working class people. Early in life, an accident left the young Wells bedridden for a long period of time, and as he recovered, the boy fell in love with reading. Leaving the drudgery of an apprenticeship as a tradesman, Wells decided to become a teacher in 1883. His talents earned him a college scholarship and he received a degree in 1890. Wells did not publish his writings until 1901, when his work Anticipations, full of visions of what the world might look like in 2000, made its debut. The aptly-named Anticipations was the first of the many beloved works that would establish Wells firmly in the science-fiction genre. A free-thinker whose views aligned with some of the most progressive philosophies of his day, Wells's ability to look beyond the here and now and offer vivid tableaux of worlds that might be has inspired fear and fantasy among readers for generations.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the ...