The New Machiavelli

What It's About

The New Machiavelli follows Richard Remington, a young man of ability and conviction who rises through Edwardian political life, moving from Cambridge idealism into the machinery of Parliament and party politics. Told as Remington's own retrospective account of his career, the novel traces his growing disillusionment with the compromises, pettiness, and hypocrisy he finds in public life, even among those who claim to be working for social progress. His story is complicated by his marriage and by a passionate entanglement that increasingly puts his political future at risk, forcing him to choose between ambition and personal conviction.

Key Concepts

The novel is as much a novel of ideas as of plot, weighing personal integrity against political ambition and asking whether real reform is possible within existing party structures. It offers a pointed satire of the Fabian Society, thinly disguised in the novel as the Baileys, and reflects Wells's own frustrations with the gap between progressive rhetoric and practical politics. Themes of sexual freedom, social convention, and the private cost of a public career run throughout.

About the Author

H. G. Wells was an English writer best known for his pioneering works of science fiction, though he also wrote extensively on politics, society, and history. He was closely involved with the Fabian Society for a time, and his novels often reflect his engagement with the social and political debates of his day.