Twenty-one, passionate and headstrong, Ann Veronica Stanley is determined to live her own life. When her father forbids her from attending a fashionable Ball, she decides she has no choice but to leave her family home and make a fresh start in London.

H.G. Wells was a professional writer and journalist, who published more than a hundred books, including novels, histories, essays and programmes for world regeneration. Wells's prophetic imagination was first displayed in pioneering works of science fiction, but later he became an apostle of socialism, science and progress. His controversial views on sexual equality and the shape of a truly developed nation remain directly relevant to our world today. He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, 'an important liberator of thought and action'. Margaret Drabble is the author of fiction and non-ficton and she has edited the Oxford Companion to English Literature. She is a CBE and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Sita A. Schutt was until recently Assystant Professor in the English Language and Literature at Bilkent University, Ankara.She has published articles on French and English detective fiction and Ford Madox Ford. She is currently writing a novel.