12 h 34 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a comfortable life feels too small—and you decide to search for a noble one?
In The Research Magnificent, H. G. Wells follows a young man with money, intelligence and a restless conscience. The life laid out for him is not enough. He turns the question of how to live into a research project, seeking through thought and experience an ideal worth giving his life to.
Travel and risk take that search beyond reflection. Love brings a wife into the quest, and with her the challenge of sharing a high aim. Against a world on the edge of war, Wells explores courage, beauty, freedom and discipline. What happens when a private ideal meets the demands of another person—and a world in crisis?
What you’ll discover
- Ambition beyond comfort Follow a restless young man who wants more than the comfortable life offered to him.
- Courage and self-command Explore a vision of nobility that asks for both bravery and the strength to face truth.
- Ideals put to work Travel and risk test whether a fine idea can become a way of living.
- A purpose shared See how love and companionship complicate the effort to live by a high ideal.
- A mind in motion Enter Wells's sustained debate about freedom, discipline and the motives behind a search for greatness.
Who will love it
For readers who love novels that argue, enjoy Wells the thinker as much as Wells the storyteller, and are curious about ideals and ambition.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A good life must be sought deliberately
- Nobility means courage, beauty and self-command
- Travel and risk test an ideal
- Love and companionship shape the quest
- Private ideals meet a world in crisis
- A novel of argument, and how it has lasted
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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La Recherche magnifique
by H. G. Wells · 1915
William Benham tests his dream of a noble life through travel, risk, love and friendship in a world in crisis.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Research Magnificent is a novel by H. G. Wells, published in 1915, in the first year of full-scale war in Europe. Wells was already known for his scientific romances and his social novels.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A good life must be sought deliberately
The starting point of the book is dissatisfaction. Wells presents a young man of means and intelligence who looks at the life laid out for people of his kind and finds it small. Money, comfort, a career and a respectable marriage seem to him poor aims for a creature with so much energy. He wants something larger, though at first he cannot say what.
The novel claims that this kind of hunger is a real force in modern people. Older ages gave people a ready answer in the church, the family estate or the code of a knight. Wells suggests that these answers had lost their hold on educated people in the early twentieth century. A thoughtful person is therefore left to work out for himself what is worth doing with a life.
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What is The Research Magnificent about?
It follows a man who sets out to discover and live a noble life, treating the search like a research project. Along the way it looks at courage, beauty, love, friendship and duty in a changing world.
When was The Research Magnificent written?
H. G. Wells published it in 1915, during the First World War. The crisis of that time shadows the book and its questions about whether private ideals can matter in a disordered world.
What does the title The Research Magnificent mean?
The title treats the pursuit of a noble life as a form of research. The word magnificent shows the scale of the aim, which is a splendid life rather than a safe or comfortable one.
The author
H. G. Wells
1866–1946 · English science fiction novelist
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was an English writer born in Bromley, Kent. He wrote novels, short stories and nonfiction. His novels included The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898). He died in London.
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