Kipps, by H.G. Wells

I am spending part of today looking at what I have in my (seriously overstocked) personal library, and am trying to figure out what to keep, and what to put back out into general circulation. I'm getting somewhat better at this as I get older, having found out long since that seller's remorse is real but hardly fatal. But, still, it's rather odd how hard it is to let go of some books.

It helps, though, immeasurably, to find out that any specific book is still in print and therefore could be easily replaced if the gap caused by its absence seems too big or lasts too long.

And so, that being the case, I am glad to see that Kipps, by H.G. Wells is still in print. Goodness, it's been years and years since I read it, but I remember a vague plan to reread it some day... (This attitude, without question, is one of the primary reasons my personal library is seriously overstocked.)


Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul

My copy is a movie tie-in paperback, touting "Half a Sixpence" starring Tommy Steele. Oh my, I'd forgotten Tommy Steele. (For a while, he seemed to be everywhere, didn't he?) I've just checked around, and "Half a Sixpence" is available on DVD, but definitely has mixed reviews. Hmmm. But then most musicals do have mixed reviews, it seems like. It came out in 1967.

There was also a 1941 movie, starring Michael Redgrave as Kipps. The website www.britmovie.co.uk has a nice write-up which covers both the movie and the book. From that, this:

By the turn of the century, Wells had grown weary of his 'scientific romances and began to turn his hand to novels of comic realism. Published in 1905, Kipps was the second work in this new phase of Wells's career. It was a book that reminded almost everyone of Dickens: written to entertain as well as to instruct, with a well-made plot which was based, unapologetically, on extreme contrivances, it included a mixture of humour, naturalism and social criticism. Kipps was autobiographical, the tale of a poor boy that made good, yet in Wells's novel the gaps between the creator and his protagonist are more intriguing than the correspondences. Wells's escape route from the dungeon of working-class life was education - he won a scholarship to study with T.H. Huxley - and his literary talents fully liberated him. Kipps seeks improvement at the Folkestone Institute, but woodcarving is as far as he gets. Like Wells, he rises above his background, but the helium that lifts him is a mystifying legacy not the exertions of his brain.