A tale of social uneasiness, a comedy of ill-manners, H.G. Wells’s fourth published novel is a long-forgotten little shiner, set in the Golden Age of the bicycling craze, sweeping Victorian England with the fervour of the late-nineties Furby. The insecure hero, a piddling draper with cringeing class awareness, intercepts in a uncouth affair between a bounder and a damsel, and begins a biking romp that will shake his perceptions of the Established Order.