Editing Love and Mr Lewisham (section)

==Reception==
''Love and Mr Lewisham'' was well received, and [[Charles Masterman]] told Wells that he believed that along with ''[[Kipps]]'', it was the novel most likely to endure.<ref>Smith (1986), p. 202.</ref> Sir Richard Gregory compared the novel to [[Thomas Hardy]]'s ''[[Jude the Obscure]]''.<ref>Smith (1986), p. 208.</ref>

{{blockquote|Happily, Mr Wells is a man of varying moods. ... 
... Like Dickens, with whom he has much more in common than Gissing had, he shows a happier touch in revealing the merits of the meek and lowly than in exposing the failings of the rich and noble. Vivid as is the gift of satire which he exhibits in other directions, he cannot get a scantling of truth and sharpness into his caricatures of overbearing village squires and supercilious ladies of the manor. But how fresh and clear, on the other hand, is the picture of the poor rustic scholar in 'Love and Mr Lewisham'! How tender the humor, and how light and telling the touch with which the story of his struggle between love and ambition is depicted!<ref>{{cite journal|title=The Ideas of Mr H. G. Wells|journal=The Quarterly Review|volume=208|date=April 1908|pages=472–490|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092529205;view=1up;seq=507|postscript=; quote pp. 487–488}}</ref>}}

More recent critics have also praised the novel. Richard Higgins claims the novel elaborates a "close examination of the relationship between class and the emotions", adding that "these emotions have much to add to conventional class analysis. Many of these emotions are more prosaic than we have been accustomed to observe—more passive frustration, for example, than class rage."<ref>Higgins, Richard, 'Feeling Like a Clerk in H G Wells', ''Victorian Studies'' 50:3 (2008), p.458</ref> And [[Adam Roberts (British writer)|Adam Roberts]] argues that the novel uses Chaffrey's fake [[séance]] as an expressive metaphor for a Wellsian engagement with questions of sexual desire and disillusionment.<ref>Roberts, Adam (2017), [http://wellsattheworldsend.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/love-and-mr-lewisham-1900.html 'Love and Mr Lewisham', ''Wells at the World's End'']</ref>