This is Wells's "State of England" novel which makes it very clear that the state of England is not good. Greed, capitalism gone rampant, dishonesty, decay, women forced into marriage or a form of prostitution, random pointless murder. I'm glad I read this for a class on Wells, as I think I can more clearly see what he was doing here when comparing it to his work in general. ( )

Starts and ends a bit trite. 1/4 of the book holds you pretty well. The attack on capitalism is weak and leaves you wanting more; a death blow rather than a sentimental rebuke. ( )

4/5/22

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3551778.html

This is Wells' best-known non-sf novel. I say that despite the following points:

- Most of the plot revolves around a magical potion, Tono-Bungay. But Tono-Bungay is a complete fake, and sells well because of marketing, not because it actually does any good.
- There is a miraculous mineral which would have transformed the plot, indeed the world, if it came into play. But all supplies are lost, so it becomes a narrative hook for an unsuccessful journey instead.
- The hero flies an aeroplane to France, in a novel published (and mostly set) in 1908, something that didn't actually happen until 1909. But in 1908 it was clearly going to happen pretty soon - in October, the Daily Mail offered a prize of £500 for a cross-channel flight made before the end of the year.
- Anyway the hero's aeronautical experiments turn out to be a dead-end, and he abandons them and is designing warships by the end of the book.

But most of all, the point of the book isn't the change to human society offered by transformative technology, it's about society and social mobility in the very first years of the twentieth century in England. The tech bits are decorative rather than fundamental, and I think it's less sfnal than the Lovejoy books where he supernaturally differentiates real antiques from fakes.

So, the story is actually about our narrator and his uncle; his uncle starts the book by becoming bankrupt, but very quickly becomes fabulously rich thanks to Tono-Bungay. His nephew helps him manage the business (and does well out of it) but fails three times to find true love, his emotional life reported in much more realistic terms than I think was normal for fiction of the day - for this alone I think it's a memorable book, avoiding romantic cliches. The mineral expedition is a slightly silly adventure, but I think redeems itself as a literary device by failing to bring home the goods.

There are unfortunately still plenty of other cliches. I never quite got the feeling that we were meant to take the uncle and aunt seriously; clearly the posh folk of Surrey think they are getting above themselves and I sensed that the author thinks so too. The French scenes are a little bit in that direction too. But overall it's a very engaging and interesting novel, and I feel with some confidence that I can work through the rest of Wells. ( )

At times, I almost really liked this book for its criticism of consumer capitalism (for a book published in 1909, T-B feels ahead of its time in this respect) and the realness of some of the characters, but I got fed up with the narrator/author constantly explaining his own symbolism... not to mention his random anti-semitic remarks, his problematic relationship to women/marriage, and that especially disturbing Heart of Darkness voyage into Africa, where in a typical heart-of-darkness/Quap-fevered state, he loses all his "european morality/civility/etc" and kills a totally innocent African man. I mean, shit, come on. ( )

Wells' sci-fi is good, but this is better. His social analysis of the economic hollowness at the core of speculation is astute, deep and timely. He achieves a difficult writing-feat of a first-person narrator with whom to sympathize, respect and also despise and abhor. (Wells' abhorrence may not have been as great, as the character, and narrative, are riddled with brain-poisoning of the times, e.g. sexism and racism.) The story is Dickensian, a narrative of a youngster becoming a man, but darker and more mordant than Dickens. ( )

This was quite an interesting novel detailing a coming of age, and then exploration, life story. I felt that the characters were well placed and that they really drove the heart of the story forward. This is different from Wells' other works as well, and herein lies its power. Overall, a great novel.

4 stars. ( )

'I believe the time has come for flying to be possible. Real flying!'
     'Flying!'
     'Up in the air. Aeronautics! Machine heavier than air. It can be done. And I want to do it.'
     'Is there money in it, George?'
     'I don't know nor care! But that's what I'm going to to do.' (203)

One could write a whole book just on H. G. Wells novels featuring scientists who are married, I suspect. Though Tono-Bungay is probably a good book, it has little to offer the dedicated H. G. Wells reader. I saw elements of many of Wells's domestic novels in it: Love and Mr Lewisham (1899-1900), Ann Veronica (1909), The History of Mr Polly (1910), The New Machiavelli (1910), and Marriage (1911-12). Not to mention aspects of Wells's own life, as well as resonances with The Time Machine (1895), The First Men in the Moon (1900-01), and The War in the Air (1908). Like so many of Wells's other domestic novels, a man from a lower-class background seeks a scientific career, has an affair during a disintegrating marriage, and has his career aspirations derailed by the social exigencies of modern England. To be fair to Wells, though, all of the domestic novels I listed above (except for Mr Lewisham) were written later; I just happened to have read them first. The angle of Tono-Bungay itself does yield something new, and the scenes between George Pondervo and his uncle were usually the best parts.

George Ponderevo ends up apprenticed to his uncle, who is a chemist (in the sense of being a pharmacist). Edward Ponderevo is always trying to sell people things they don't need, because the difficulty of being a chemist is that people only need stuff when they're sick. He comes up with the quack tonic Tono-Bungay (Edward Mendelson's introduction says it's basically Coca-Cola), which soon becomes a huge success. George doesn't contribute to the drink, but he runs his uncle's manufacturing concerns, keeping the production line efficient with his analytical mind. As the Ponderevos expand the commercial empire more and more, becoming more and more successful, George gets married, has a marriage disintegrate, throws himself into his work, takes up inventing heavier-than-air flight, and goes on an expedition to an African island seeking radioactive minerals. It is, perhaps, more capacious than most of Wells's domestic novels, with the effect that it doesn't quite cohere. I like many of the parts, but the whole left me cold.

George has a scientific mind, as the novel reminds us on several occasions, but like a lot of Wells's protagonists, he struggles to apply it. He has a (supposedly) scientific theory of society but I'm not sure what good it does; he never gets the science degree he wanted because he gets demoralizes and basically flunks out before he goes to work for his uncle; his flying machine is of limited success; he ends his career helping design battleships that the British government doesn't want to buy. And, of course, the world is too complicated to apply science to it in any real useful way, something I think Wells eventually forgot: "The perplexing thing about life is the irresoluble complexity of reality, of things and relations alike" (195).

George occasionally glimpses truths, though; I found a section where George compares the radioactive decay of "quap" to the potential end of the world really effective: "I am haunted by a grotesque fancy of the ultimate eating away and dry rotting and dispersal of all our world. [...] I do not believe this can be the end; no human soul can believe in such an end and go on living, but to it science points as a possible thing, science and reason alike" (329-30).

The scene where George, without any emotion at all, kills a native on the quap island to keep his expedition's presence a secret, is also really interesting. George himself doesn't understand the importance of the moment, but he clearly knows it is important, because he included it in his account of his life. To me it points toward a fundamental theme throughout Tono-Bungay (and Wells's other fiction, domestic and sf alike): the alienating nature of modernity. We meet these people so different to us from fantastic places, and all we can think to do is kill them to make ourselves richer. We have this wonderful chemical sciences, and what we invent with them is a "medicine" that no one actually needs. We can almost build flying machines, but no government will fund their development. We know so much about sex, but we teach none of it to our men and women.

Uncle Edward is a great character, too, and the ever-increasing accounts of his ridiculous ambitions (he tries to buy the British Medical Journal at one point, so that it will run articles favorable to Tono-Bungay) are just good fun to read about even as they appall. I loved that his never-finished mansion included a billiards room with a glass ceiling placed beneath the ornamental lake. Some, like Adam Roberts, say he is a Dickensian character, and I agree.

Adam Roberts calls Tono-Bungay a "rich and brilliant novel" and I don't know if I can quite bring myself to agree-- maybe I would have thought so if I'd read it where it belonged in Wells's own development as a writer, as he did-- but like the best Wells, it speaks to both its own moment and to our moment. But it's ambitious and interesting and I think helps make the case (as my colleague Cari Hovanec sometimes does) for H. G. Wells as a modernist writer.

The one where the protaganist works in his uncle's chemist shop, helping create a market a cough syrup that makes his uncle rich. Then he loses everything. ( )

Enjoyable writing style, some interesting (but now dated) philosophical points, no real payoff at the end for me. ( )

I think this might be my favorite Wells so far. Beautifully written and less winging off into unexpected territory, though there is a brief trip to Africa. ( )

Startlingly frank in places for an Edwardian novel. Enjoyable fictional biography about the business and personal life of George Pondevero. ( )

George Ponderevo is the son of a housekeeper for a wealthy English family. When he gets into a fight with a boy of a higher social class, he is sent away and ends up living with his uncle Edward, a chemist. Edward develops an elixir called Tono-Bungay that he markets as a cure-all even though it doesn’t really do any good. He takes George on as his partner although George is appalled by the lack of ethics in Edward’s creative marketing. As they make more and more money from dubious schemes, George spends less time with the business and more time with his real passion: developing a flying machine. Eventually, the whole scheme comes crashing down around them, and George is left to pick up the pieces of his life.

I’m not particularly a fan of Wells’ science fiction. I did like this better than his other novels, although I think his nonfiction is better than his fiction. There were a lot of themes to think about in the book: consumerism, faith, and social class, among others. Wells did a fairly good job of addressing these issues. I was bothered by the fact that as the narrator, George kept calling it a novel when he was supposedly writing about his own life. Overall, this was a decent read, but not a great one. ( )

This is an odd book. It starts out as a critique of the English class system(an underlying theme throughout), moves onto a story about a quack remedy and the misleading advertising around it, reckless financial speculation, a spot of imperialistic theft on the high seas and finally an episode that echoes Bert Smallways' adventures in The War in the Air. Despite this Wells manages to hold everything together through his energetic and often humorous writing. If it is not the great masterpiece the author thought it was, it is nevertheless worth reading for the sheer brio of the story. ( )

How marketing a product can lead to riches and then to bankruptcy. Insightful and pertinent to today's consumer. ( )

The last of Wells’ works that was on my tbr list for the 1001 books. Wells occasionally delights me, but, on the whole, though I do regard him a genius and a mind a century ahead of his time, his writing doesn’t really grab me too much. Tono-Bungay was just such a novel.

George is lured into working for his uncle who has concocted some potion that he is flogging off as a cure-all. It’s nothing of the sort though; as the business grows exponentially, like most things these days, rather than this demonstrating a superior product, it simply demonstrates superior marketing.

Eventually, the ethical skeletons come out of the closet of morality and give George nightmares he can’t escape from without his whole life imploding. Or can he?

What I did appreciate about this book, coming as it does between those classics of sci-fi The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, was that it was Wells turning his brilliant mind to something less alien: our everyday capitalist lives. I’m used to him dealing with more esoteric subjects like… well, like time travel or alien invasions. But this novel revealed that he very much understood not only his times but those to come. Quite a few of those who grace the front covers of our magazines might want to read a copy of this.

There’s much more character development in this novel than in any other I’ve read of Wells. I other works, his characters seem to be dominated by the crisis at hand. In this one, it’s very much the impact of crises on a character that is the focus. It’s like Wells suddenly realised you can see through both ends of a telescope.

The weakness in the novel was, for me, the style. However, I’ll put this down, not to any lack on Wells’ part, but to the fact that while he is a writer ahead of his time, I’m a reader very much in or quite possibly behind my own time. ( )

This novel was an unexpected joy to read--I usually find Wells to be plodding in style while inventive in his story. This novel follows its own path and, while I only pulled it because it is on the 1001 Must Read list, I had great fun following George on his life's path. ( )

Tono-Bungay by H. G. Wells, published in 1908.

This is a semi autobiographical fiction work. The narrator, George Ponderevo calls it a novel. George is a young man from the working middle class. His mother is a servant in Bladesover. George is sent away to learn a trade after he upsets the household. The major story follows George in the home of his uncle Edward Ponderevo. At this time George is studying the sciences with the plan to become a pharmacist with his uncle. His uncle loses his business and leaves George with the man who buys the business. The uncle finds a scheme to sell “Tono-Bungay” (Ton of Bunk) a treatment that will revitalize. George joins with his uncle even though he feels it is swindle because of his love pursuit. George is more interested in aeronautics and love pursuits. He marries rashly, has an affair, divorces and finally finds his one true love for which he sacrifices life to try and gain. George goes off on a sailing ship to gather quap which will restore his uncle’s good fortune and hopefully his standing with his one true love, Beatrice. The book is a statement on advertisement, class structure in Britain and marriage among other loosely woven topics. It is partly satire on capitalism, advertising and the gullibility of the public. It also portrays George and Edward Ponderevo who are driven by greed.
Wells is known for his science fiction writing. This novel is not science fiction but the subjects of “Tono-Bungay”, a pharmaceutical solution like you would by from the traveling medicine man, the creation of flying machines and air balloons and the quaf (radioactive elements) and the description of the quaf all are scientific topics.
H.G. Wells or Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 and died in 1946. He was a prolific writer in other genres besides science fiction but he is considered to be one of the father’s of science fiction. He considered himself a socialist. His father was a domestic gardener, shopkeeper and professional cricketer and his wife was a former domestic servant. He was from the impoverished lower middle class. Wells was apprenticed to various occupations including draper and chemist which he failed at. He started to attend school as a pupil teacher and he earned a degree in zoology in 1890. Well’s married twice and had numerous affairs. Tono-Bungay is very futuristic as it explores advertising and also the decay of radioactive elements.
This was a free book at Amazon and is also available at other sources on the internet for free.
( )

This is a substantial novel by H G Wells, which bulges at the seams with ideas, themes and storylines. Some critics have acclaimed it as his best novel and I can understand why, because at times I felt I was reading a great novel. It is the bulging at the seams feeling that gives me pause for thought: Wells was never going to write the "perfect" novel, he was far too prolific and intent on moving on to his next big idea to be able to steady himself to produce such a masterpiece; it just was not his thing to do. He might have realised that Tono-Bungay contained some of his best writing, because the final chapter is a sort of coda to the rest of the book which imaginatively tries to tie it all together and do you know; he very nearly pulls it off. Let me explain:

The story of the life of George Ponderovo is told in the first person and we first meet our hero as a teenager and son of the housekeeper in service at Bladesover; a stately mansion. It reads rather like an episode from Downton Abbey where George disgraces himself by getting too familiar with Lady Beatrice the young daughter and is sent away to relatives. The descriptions of the servants lives "downstairs" is very well brought to life as is the dependence of the local village to Bladesover, there is a feel here of a world that is resisting change and our sympathies are all with George as he is taken by his mother to be an apprentice to a baker in a large town. Georges sojourn with the working class down at heel baker who has no life beyond his struggle to make ends meet is mercifully brief as George runs away. He makes it back to Bladesover, but that world is now closed to him and he is again taken by his mother to an estranged relative; his uncle Edward Ponderevo, who runs a chemist shop. Edward Ponderevo is a small man with big ideas, always scheming and looking for the break that will allow him to make his fortune. He gets on well with George and rehearses with him his ideas of how he can be successful:

"the whole trend of modern money making is to foresee something that will presently be needed and to put it out of reach and to haggle yourself wealthy"

Uncle Edward was constantly on the lookout for these, which he called "corners" and we soon learn of his big idea: Tono-Bungay, which is a sort of elixir that Edward has concocted and which he believes he can sell as a "cure all" for people who need a "pick-me-up". George decides to educate himself and with an iron self discipline sets himself on a course of study in London and here Wells rewrites his earlier novel [Love and Mr Lewisham]. George wins scholarships, but falls in love with Marion who stimulates his sex drive to such an extent that he will do anything to get her. She proves elusive to his needs and George realises he must marry and to do this he needs an income. He revisits Uncle Edward to find him in the process of setting up a factory to produce bottles of Tono-Bungay. He asks George to run the factory for him at a salary that will allow him to marry Marion. George's marriage soon gets into trouble, they are sexually incompatible and Marion's outlook and world are not compatible to George's. The breakdown of the relationship and the divorce are brilliantly handled by Wells, who poured much of his own life experience into his writing. It certainly struck a chord with me. Well's writing about the impersonal nature of London's inhabitants is also spot on, as is the drive for success, which heralds in changing times another major theme of the book. However bound up with this is the "Mrs Grundyisms" of many of the people; those who are frightened of change and who cling to the world in which they know and were brought up in.

Meanwhile Uncle Edward's business ventures are becoming more and more successful, he is expanding; buying up businesses that were his suppliers and venturing further afield. The trick is the relentless advertising and Wells once more you feel pours his own feelings into Georges thoughts on the self made men of the time:

"The irrational muddle of the community in which we live gave him that, paid him at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling it lies. For he created nothing, he invented nothing, he economised nothing. I cannot claim that a single one of the great businesses we organised added any real value to human life at all. Several like Tono-Bungay were unmitigated frauds by any honest standards, the giving of nothing coated in advertisements for money"

The flags flutter, the crowds cheer, the legislatures meet. Yet it seems to me indeed at times that all this present commercial civilisation is no more than my poor uncle's career writ large, a swelling, thinning bubble of assurances, that its arithmetic is just as unsound, it's dividends as ill-advised, its ultimate aim as vague and forgotten, that it all drifts on perhaps to some tremendous parallel to his individual disaster.

Uncle Edward knows only one thing; the drive to succeed, he buys bigger and better houses, he becomes a magnate, an important player in the financial world, he is addicted to acquisitiveness and Wells says of people like him that Acquisitiveness becomes the substance of their lives.

George gets more and more alienated from the successful business world and follows his interest in aeronautics. He works with a chosen engineer in an effort to build the first motor powered aircraft. Wells lovingly describes the problems involved and the attempts to fly. George has become very rich working with his uncle and Lady Beatrice the girl from his childhood days once again enters his life. The novel then lurches into an adventure story as George leads a piratical expedition to steal some Quap (yes Quap) from a deserted location off the African coast. Quap is radioactive material that Uncle Edward believes will save his tottering empire. George recognises that Quap is Cancerous, that its radioactivity is like a contagious disease that leads to decay and he compares this to the society that he has just temporarily left behind.

Uncle George's empire falls, he is thrown to the wolves and Wells manages to cram in a deathbed scene that somehow hankers back to Victorian romanticism rather than forward to Edwardian commercialism. Tono-Bungay feels like a novel at a crossroads. Published in 1909 it portrays a society in the process of change, but not really a change for the better. In Well's view it is a time of lost opportunity and his coda at the end of the book looks at scientific invention and perhaps truth as a possible way out of the trough as George powers a destroyer down the river Thames reflecting on the London that he passes, which has also been a major player in this novel. Adventure story, a critique of adventure capitalism, some science and some science fiction (the Quap), a love story, the decay of civilisation, a portrait of a city, changing times all compete for the readers attention in this most ambitious of novels. Wells doesn't quite hold it all together, but there is so much that is great in this novel, so much good writing, that it does not deserve the obscurity that it currently enjoys. Enthusiastically recommended and a 4.5 star read. ( )

I picked up H.G Wells' "Tono-Bungay" mainly because I grew up on a lake with a name similar to the title so I knew absolutely nothing about the story or plot. I was pleasantly surprised by this story, which was really engrossing and interesting.

The novel tells the story of George Ponderevo, who becomes wrapped up in his uncle's scheme to sell some sort of cure-all tonic that, of course, they both know is all bunk. The story is more expansive than that description, basically following the events of Ponderevo's life (and little touching on his business activities.) There is a ton of social commentary ranging from religion to socialism to the English class system along the way.

On the whole I really enjoyed the book... there were some parts that dragged a little. I found the sections about Tono-Bungay (the miracle tonic) itself to be the most interesting, but Wells wanders away from that topic frequently. Overall, this was a fun book. ( )

This is a semiautobiographical fiction work. The narrator, George Ponderevo calls it a novel. George is a young man from the working middle class. His mother is a servant in Bladesover. George is sent away to learn a trade after he upsets the household. The major story follows George in the home of his uncle Edward Ponderevo. At this time George is studying the sciences with the plan to become a pharmacist with his uncle. His uncle loses his business and leaves George with the man who buys the business. The uncle finds a scheme to sell “Tono-Bungay” a treatment that will revitalize. George joins with his uncle even though he feels it is swindle because of his love pursuit. George is more interested in aeronautics and love pursuits. He marries rashly, has an affair, divorces and finally finds his one true love for which he sacrifices life to try and gain. George goes off on a sailing ship to gather quap which will restore his uncle’s good fortune and hopefully his standing with his one true love, Beatrice. The book is a statement on advertisement, class structure in Britain and marriage among other loosely woven topics. It is partly satire on capitalism, advertising and the gullibility of the public. It also portrays George and Edward Ponderevo who are driven by greed.
Wells is known for his science fiction writing. This novel is not science fiction but the subjects of “Tono-Bungay”, a pharmaceutical solution like you would by from the traveling medicine man, the creation of flying machines and air balloons and the quaf (radioactive elements) and the description of the quaf all are scientific topics.
H.G. Wells or Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 and died in 1946. He was a prolific writer in other genres besides science fiction but he is considered to be one of the father’s of science fiction. He considered himself a socialist. His father was a domestic gardener, shopkeeper and professional cricketer and his wife was a former domestic servant. He was from the impoverished lower middle class. Wells was apprenticed to various occupations including draper and chemist which he failed at. He started to attend school as a pupil teacher and he earned a degree in zoology in 1890. Well’s married twice and had numerous affairs. Tono-Bungay is very futuristic as it explores advertising and also the decay of radioactive elements. ( )

Tono-Bungay. WTF? I mean, like, if you were browsing through Barnes and Noble, would you pick up a novel with a title that sounds like the Cherokee tribal name for Richard Simmons? And a novel by H.G. Wells? Didn't he write science fiction a long LONG time ago. He was steampunk before anyone knew what steampunk was? Well there you go, that explains why this masterpiece of a novel sleeps in oblivion. But do put aside your preconceptions, and do pick it up. Tono is, in many ways, very relevent, and satirizes societal and economic flaws that remain problematic. At its best moments, Tono-Bungay is another The Great Gatsby - a different author, a slightly different perspective, and a slightly earlier era -but every bit as poignant and lyrical a summation of the broken promises of "progress" and "success".

The title, though it has a Malaysian flavor, and a whiff of H. Rider Haggard, actually refers to a bottled elixir much like Coca-Cola. The central story concerns a flim-flam, super hyped empire founded on that elixir, and the subsequent skyrocketing and plummeting fortunes of the chemist, Edward Ponderevo, who invents it. The epic is narrated by his nephew and assistant, George, who is the real protagonist of the novel. In parts, the novel contains semi-autobigraphical sketches by Wells, who, by the way, was much much more than just a science fiction writer (curiously, many of the best observers of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras are remembered only for their lighter work. Jack London, for White Fang, R.L.Stevenson for Treasure Island, H.G.Wells for the Time Machine, etc.)

The novel is a melange of styles, starting out a bit like David Copperfield, containing a Conradian episode toward the end, and finishing with a flourish like F.Scott Fitzgerald. But the writing is clear throughout, and the narrative never waivers. Wells alternates between exploring the complexities of romance - as they are experienced by the nephew - and dissecting the absurdities of the business world - as it is exploited by his uncle. Along the way, we get a backwards look at the crumbling class structure of Victorian England - fading, for better or for worse. Ultimately, the sentiment conveyed by the nephew, lingers like complex perfume. Pessimism, romance, science, humor, nostalgia combine into a scent that evokes the glory, tragedy, and absurdity of human enterprise. A scent that lingers unto this century - as we, no wiser, use technological marvels like iPads to watch undersea robots struggle to plug a monstrous hole, a mile beneath a once blue, and fertile, sea. ( )

Unexpectedly enjoyable social satire. I can understand why some people found the subject matter less than enthralling, but for me Wells' prose made it very entertaining. Let's face it - Edwardian society novels will never be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're tempted this is certainly timely right now. Themes such as near-fraudulent advertising and bad loans leading to a recession make this a good read at the moment. Characters are engaging though the plot meanders slightly, but overall I found it a very satisfying read.

www.solelfictional.org ( )

This is Wells writing stylistically like Dickens in a mode of novel-writing that aims at the nineteenth century version of social justice (even though it was published at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century).
Today he is mainly remembered for his science fiction. "Tono Bungay" is an unusual work in that it straddles two of these genres: it is both science fiction and social commentary. The novel follows the rise and fall of an empire built on a quack medicine. The medicine, Tono Bungay, gives the book its title. Regardless of what it stands for, it is clear that Tono Bungay is not entirely good for you, and probably harmful in the long run. The short-term effects are however sufficiently pleasing so as to make a fortune for its inventor.
The novel is narrated by a young man, George Ponderevo, who, while not as appealing as the best of Dickens' heroes, has a certain charm. His rise along with that of his Uncle Teddy is chronicled with wit and an ear for the details of turn of the century commerce that make the book rewarding to the interested reader. Wells was able to write deeper and had a greater palette than those who may have only read his early science-romances might imagine. However Wells does add instances of science fiction even in this novel and often they are only remotely related to the main topic. Such is the case for the various experiments in air travel which make up a substantial part of the book. Yet another science fiction episode concerns a mysterious ore, which appears to be radioactive. Ostensibly, the purpose of this ore is to provide Tono Bungay a new infusion and lease on life. Radioactivity had only recently been discovered when Wells wrote this novel, and indeed was very mysterious . Wells treats the radioactive ore as something that fundamentally corrupts all that it touches.
The result is an unusual book that as a whole is better than most of Wells' many works of science fiction. ( )

921 Tono-Bungay, by H. G. Wells (read 5 Oct 1967) There is an article in Wikipedia on this book, which begins thusly: "Tono-Bungay (1909), by H. G. Wells, is a realist semi-autobiographical novel. It is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with the promotion of Tono-Bungay, a harmful stimulant disguised as a miraculous cure-all, the creation of his ambitious uncle Edward. As the tonic prospers, George experiences a swift rise in social status, elevating him to riches and opportunities that he had never imagined, nor indeed desired." I don't remember much from my reading of the book over 40 years ago, except I do recall I was not overly impressed by it. I do know that the reason I read it is that in my college English Lit book (The College Survey of English Literature, Shorter Edition, 1947) on page 1261 it is listed in "Suggestions for Further Reading" as one of 16 novels--all of which I have read except The Water Gypsies, by A. P. Herbert ( )