The book's protagonist is a Victorian English scientist and gentleman inventor living in Richmond, Surrey, and identified by a narrator simply as the Time Traveller. The narrator recounts the Traveller's lecture to his weekly dinner guests that time is simply a fourth dimension and demonstrates a tabletop model machine for travelling through the fourth dimension. He reveals that he has built a machine capable of carrying a person through time, and returns at dinner the following week to recount a remarkable tale, becoming the new narrator.
The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views, his view on life and abundance, and the contemporary angst about industrial relations.