Mr. Britling Sees It Through

When war breaks out in the summer of 1914, the comfortable Essex household of the essayist Mr. Britling is slowly pulled apart. A young German tutor must go home, tennis parties give way to rumor and recruitment, and Britling’s son Hugh volunteers for the front. Wells wrote the novel as the fighting raged, and it captures with unusual honesty how ordinary English people talked themselves through hope, confusion, and grief. What begins as gentle domestic comedy darkens into one of the most affecting accounts of the home front written during the war itself. Britling’s search for meaning after loss gives the book its lasting weight. This free PDF and EPUB edition offers the complete text.