Mr. Britling Sees It Through

Mr. Britling Sees It Through is H. G. Wells's "masterpiece of the wartime experience in England." The novel is divided into three parts and tells the story of a renowned writer, Mr. Britling. Britling is a complex character whose conflicts are the chief concern of the plot. Mrs. Britling, Edith, runs the household but she does not engage her husband's affections. He feels himself "profoundly incompatible" with Edith whom he married after the death of his first wife Mary, with whom he had been "passionately happy." His deep love of the son they had together, Hugh, is inflected by his continued emotional attachment to the memory of his first wife. Mr. Britling Sees It Through was one of the most popular novels in the United Kingdom and Australia during World War I. It was considered "the finest, most courageous, truthful, and humane book written in Europe in the course of this accursed war...."