The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance

H.G. Wells barely revised The Invisible Man once it was published, adding only an epilogue. But the opening statement of that epilogue--"So ends the strange and evil experiment of the Invisible Man"--has posed challenges to scholars. How to understand it? Does it speak strictly to the scientific elements of the novel? Or is it a part of the work's political underpinnings? The 1897 New York first edition (the first edition to incorporate the epilogue) is used here as the basis for the exhaustive annotations and other critical apparatus of the world's foremost Wellsian scholar. The introduction examines in great detail the novel's position in the Wellsian canon and sets the major themes in context with the literary conventions used in his other works, particularly the scientific romances.