The World of William Clissold

Abstract

At the end of his life Wells described The World of William Clissold as ‘a vast three decker, issued in three successive volumes of rigmarole, which broke down the endurance of readers and booksellers alike’.⁴⁴ Never a best seller, the book today is one of the least-regarded of his works. Yet it remains true that of all his novels William Clissold is possibly the most criticised and at the same time the least read by those who disparage it. It was written during the years 1924-6 at his winter home, Lou Bastidon near Grasse, and was clearly intended to be an extremely ambitious novel. Just as Tono-Bungay set out to describe ‘nothing more nor less than Life—as one man has found it’, so William Clissold aimed to be ‘a description of my world … my world and my will. I want it to be a picture of everything as it is reflected in my brain.’ The book is planned on a spacious canvas and its daunting length and frequent philosophical digressions have probably deterred many readers. At first sight it has the form of a collection of disparate essays rather than a novel, yet in a ‘Note Before the Title Page’ Wells insisted that ‘it is claimed to be a complete full-dress novel, that and nothing more’.