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 of ideas, big questions about how to live, and a hero who is brave, absurd and sincere. Fans of travel, revolutions and Edwardian London will feel at home.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A friend sorts a dead man's noble papers
- Fear is the first limit to beat
- A divorced home shapes a restless boy
- Prothero argues Benham into his idea
- London drifts, so Benham walks away
- Amanda arrives and sweeps him up
- A honeymoon shows how different they are
- Work and love pull in opposite directions
- The Research widens into a faith
Who’s who
- William Porphyry BenhamA rich, pale, intense Englishman who wants to live nobly and sets out to study how, even when it hurts those near him.
- WhiteA journalist and novelist, Benham's old schoolfellow, who sorts the great untidy pile of papers and tells the story.
- Billy ProtheroBenham's earthy, witty friend from school and Cambridge, who keeps asking why and pulls Benham back toward ordinary life.
- AmandaA quick, adventurous young woman from Harting whom Benham marries, and who wants London, company and a shared life.
- Lady MarayneBenham's charming, strong-willed mother, who wants a glittering career for her son and cannot bear to be bored.
- Mrs. SkelmersdaleA pretty widow who becomes Benham's first lover in London and whom he tries to leave kindly.
- The Reverend Harold BenhamBenham's father, a schoolmaster who tries to keep up appearances and never quite finds the words for his son.
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La ricerca magnifica
by H. G. Wells · 1915
Benham crosses a bull's field to test his courage, then clings to a fence and is sick.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Why does a rich young man cross a field with a bull in it, then walk into an Indian jungle at night to meet a tiger? William Porphyry Benham wants to live nobly and fully, and he treats that wish as a research project.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A friend sorts a dead man's noble papers
Near the start, White, a journalist and novelist, finds ten filing cases, a crammed bureau and a full drawer in the rooms of his old schoolfellow Benham. Benham has died, and White has promised to make a book of the papers. The pile has no shape. It holds essays, diaries, clippings and notes on one question, how a person can live an aristocratic life.
By aristocratic, Benham means nothing about titles. He means intensity, clarity and courage, a life with a flame in it. His titles for the work keep changing, from The Aristocratic Life to Life Set Free, and White decides it is a vast proliferation. Still, a story takes shape in his mind as he reads, and he sets out to tell it.
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What is The Research Magnificent about?
It follows William Benham, a wealthy Englishman who tries to work out how to live a noble life. He studies fear, desire, jealousy and prejudice in himself and across the world, while friends and family pull him in other directions.
Who is White in The Research Magnificent?
White is Benham's old schoolfellow, a journalist and novelist. Later he examines the papers, and the story grows from his sorting and his memories.
What does the Research Magnificent mean?
It is Benham's name for his lifelong inquiry into the noble life. He treats nobility like a science, testing ideas in travel, danger and argument, and noting the results in notebooks, essays and filing cases.
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.
More by H. G. Wells
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