Based on H. G. Wells's own life experience in the drapery trade, this comic novel presents our anti-hero, Alfred Polly, miserable, timid, and without direction, but with a gift for creating incomprehensible conversational "epithets" to express himself. No one quite understands what he has just said to them ... Was it a compliment? An insult? Was it profound or absurd?

The novel opens by telling us, "He hated Foxbourne, he hated Foxbourne High Street, he hated his shop and his wife and his neighbours--every blessed neighbour--and with indescribable bitterness he hated himself." The story unfolds from Mr. Polly's early education, his courtship and marriage, to his eventual discovery of purpose in life.