Cheltenham by an aunt and an uncle who is a liberal Anglican priest. A complacent Edwardian worldview that an Oxford education did nothing to shake is undermined when Blettsworthy is betrayed in business and in love by his best friend, Graves, and his mistress, Olive Slaughter. A family solicitor and counselor named Ferndyke advises him to travel in order to recover from disillusionment so severe that it has threatened his sanity. Arnold Blettsworthy follows his advice and embarks for
Pernambuco
Pernambuco () is a States of Brazil, state of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.6 million people as of 2020, making it List of Brazilian states by population, sev ...
and
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
on a tramp steamer, the ''Golden Lion''. But the captain and crew take a disliking to him, and when the vessel founders off the coast of Brazil there is a mutiny that results in the captain shutting Blettsworthy in a cabin and leaving him to perish with the ship.
Blettsworthy survives only by being captured by cannibals who take him to Rampole Island. There he becomes the "sacred lunatic" of a tribe living in neolithic conditions on an island where
megatheria
Sloths are a group of Neotropical xenarthran mammals constituting the suborder Folivora, including the extant arboreal tree sloths and extinct terrestrial ground sloths. Noted for their slowness of movement, tree sloths spend most of their li ...
are still subsisting. The most forward-thinking of the sages who govern the tribe, Chit, makes strategic use of Blettsworthy and his advanced ideas, but when he falls in love with a woman coveted by the tribe's military chief Ardam, he becomes an outcast. He seems about to die in the struggle that results, but awakens to find that he has really been in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
in the care of Rowena (cf. Wena) and Dr. Minchett (cf. Chit), a psychoanalyst. He learns that he has lived through an extended hallucinatory psychotic episode. World War I has broken out in the meantime, and having recovered his sanity, Blettsworthy believes that the best thing for him to do is to enlist in the British Army as a private. He survives being wounded in combat, but loses a leg. While recovering he meets Graves again, whom he forgives and helps become a success in "the world of post-war marketing." At the end of the novel, Blettsworthy, "barely forty," is encouraged by Graves to devote the rest of his life to "the general advance of mankind."
Composition and reception
Like ''
The Autocracy of Mr. Parham
''The Autocracy of Mr. Parham'' is a novel by H. G. Wells. It was originally published in both Britain and America with illustrations by the British cartoonist Low (David Low (cartoonist), David Low).
The U.S. edition carried the subtitle ''His ...
'' and ''
The Bulpington of Blup'', ''Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island'' did not sell as well as Wells's earlier novels; these are now among his "least read books", according to biographer David Smith. In the aftermath of the publication of ''Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island'', publishers began to haggle with Wells over advances and the value of serial rights for his novels. Wells's friends, however, continued to praise his work;
Eileen Power
Eileen Edna Le Poer Power (9 January 18898 August 1940) was a British economic historian and medievalist.
Early life and education
Eileen Power was the eldest daughter of a stockbroker and was born at Altrincham, Cheshire (now part of Great ...
, for example, called the novel "absolutely first class".
[David C. Smith, ''H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography'' (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 297-300.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mr. Blettsworthy on Rampole Island
Novels by H. G. Wells
1928 British novels
1928 science fiction novels
Novels set on islands
Doubleday, Doran books
Ernest Benn Limited books