Love and Mr. Lewisham

Love and Mr. Lewisham is H. G. Wells's early novel about ambition, education, romance, and the collision between youthful ideals and ordinary compromise. Mr. Lewisham wants intellectual achievement and social rise, but his feelings for Ethel Henderson draw him into choices that complicate his plans. Wells treats the story with sympathy and irony, watching aspiration meet money, work, and emotional responsibility.

Readers who know H. G. Wells mainly through speculative fiction will find a grounded social novel here. Love and Mr. Lewisham suits those interested in class mobility, young adulthood, and the painful education that comes when love is not separate from practical life. The book is tender because its disappointments are so recognizably ordinary.