This is the annotated edition including the rare biographical essay by Edwin E. Slosson called “H. G. Wells — A Major Prophet Of His Time”.
“Bealby” is the best fun that Mr. H. G. Wells has given us since “Ann Veronica,” and it is sheer unadulterated fun beyond anything that could be claimed for that startling portraiture of the New Young Woman. In fact, the genuine creative talent of Mr. Wells is better exhibited by his studies of '' life among the lowly” — by his Lewisham. Polly, and Kipps —than by all his sociological vaticinations and his monotonous criticism of the way in which the world chooses at present to conduct its affairs. Bealby is just a small boy of twelve or so, a gardener's stepson put out to service in the household of a local magnate. He goes unwillingly to the scene of his labors, and things begin to happen as soon as he gets there. It is something to plunge a toasting-fork into the face of an under-butler. but this deed pales into insignificance when the boy, in his precipitate flight from the wrath otherwise to come, upsets the Lord Chancellor (at that moment a week-end guest), and forces from the latter's lips a word euphemistically described as " one brief topographical cry.'' The Lord Chancellor has had a rasping experience already, and is not in the best of tempers; the encounter with Bealby is the last camel — we mean the last straw — and hastens his departure from that hospitable roof with anathema in his heart. Bealby also thinks it wise to depart, naturally with the utmost secrecy, and thus enters upon a veritable odyssey of adventure …
