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Kipps

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About this listen

This wonderful comedy about orphan and innocent Arthur Kipps was the means by which Wells satirized what he saw as a gross stupidity and blight upon English society: the pretensions of and obsession with class. Humble drapers' assistant Arthur unexpectedly inherits his grandfather's fortune and is instantly propelled into a higher social stratum with the subsequent problems of attaining the required behaviour of a 'gentleman'.

Wells gets much comic mileage from Arthur's desperate attempts to win the approval of his 'betters' and the hand of his goddess, the ambitious, would-be London bohemian Helen, but there is pathos in his inevitable fall from grace and reunion with Ann, his childhood sweetheart. Wells, the revolutionary, makes some serious political comment and with great foresight predicts the world's citizens as 'one body', in the words of the jaundiced socialist Masterman. A joyous, thought-provoking tale with an ingenious twist in the final moments.

Public Domain (P)2010 Assembled Stories
Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction

Critic reviews

"Peter Joyce is the most remarkable one-man band in audiobook publishing. Joyce, an experienced actor, reads them all himself." (The Independent)
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