Editing The Invisible Man (section)

==Background==
According to [[John Sutherland (author)|John Sutherland]], Wells and his contemporaries such as [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] and [[Rudyard Kipling]] "essentially wrote boy's books for grown-ups." Sutherland identifies ''The Invisible Man'' as one such book.{{sfn|Wells|1996|page=xv}} Wells said that his inspiration for the novella was "The Perils of Invisibility", one of the ''[[Bab Ballads]]'' by [[W. S. Gilbert]], which includes the couplet "Old Peter vanished like a shot/but then – his suit of clothes did not."{{sfn|Wells|1996|page=xviii}} Another influence on ''The Invisible Man'' was [[Plato]]'s ''[[Republic (Plato)|Republic]]'', a book which had a significant effect on Wells when he read it as an adolescent. In the second book of the ''Republic'', [[Glaucon]] recounts the legend of the [[Ring of Gyges]], which posits that, if a man were made invisible and could act with impunity, he would "go about among men with the powers of a god."{{sfn|Wells|2017a|page=xvii}} Wells wrote the original version of the tale between March and June 1896. This version was a 25,000 word [[short story]] titled "The Man at the Coach and Horses" with which Wells was dissatisfied, so he extended it.{{sfn|Wells|1996|page=xxix}}