The Wheels Of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781539583950)

The hero of The Wheels of Chance, Mr. Hoopdriver, is a frustrated "draper's assistant" 2] in Putney, a badly paid, grinding position (and one which Wells briefly held); and yet he owns a bicycle and is setting out on a bicycling tour of "the Southern Coast" on his annual ten days' holiday. Hoopdriver survives his frustration by escaping in his imagination into a world of fantasy. He is not a skilled rider of his forty-three-pound bicycle, and his awkwardness reflects both Wells's own uncertainties in negotiating the English class system and his critical view of that society. Nonetheless, Hoopdriver is treated sympathetically: "But if you see how a mere counter-jumper, a cad on castors, and a fool to boot, may come to feel the little insufficiencies of life, and if he has to any extent won your sympathies, my end is attained".

Author: H. G. Wells
ISBN-10: 1539583953
ISBN-13: 9781539583950
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
Published: 10/18/2016
Pages: 262
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.55d