George Hunt, a clever but self-absorbed college senior, finds himself trapped between real affection and real guilt when Annie's tenderness proves stronger than his own. What begins as a witty romantic comedy soon turns into a sharp satire of courtship, exposing the uneasy distance between love as a social performance and love as a serious moral commitment. After a smoky debate among college friends about Goethe, duty, and the ethics of jilting a woman one does not mean to marry, Little Potts offers a mock-practical theory: a man should reveal his flaws and make himself unattractive rather than leave a woman in heartbreak. Hunt seizes on that advice and launches a calculated campaign of bad behavior, bad taste, and petty cruelty to drive Annie away. He insults her, embarrasses her before her friend Lou Roberts, and even uses fake sentimental verses and awful songs to test her patience. Yet each maneuver only deepens the psychological tension, as Annie struggles between loyalty, confusion, and disgust while Hunt grows more anxious, more mistaken, and more absurd. By the time he prepares to propose, he is determined to secure one final sign of rejection, only to reveal how thoroughly he has misread both Annie and himself. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.

À propos de l'auteur

Bellamy, Edward

Edward Bellamy was an American writer and social thinker born in 1850 in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, into a family shaped by Protestant ministry and intellectual seriousness. After a brief and restless path through college and legal study, he turned to journalism and fiction, eventually becoming one of the most influential American utopian voices of the late nineteenth century. His writing brought him wide attention for imagining a more orderly, just, and humane society, and for using fiction not merely to entertain but to test the moral possibilities of modern life. Across his best-known work and later stories, he explored themes of economic inequality, social cooperation, labor, technological change, and the hope that human progress might be guided by fairness rather than greed. That vision resonated strongly in an era of industrial upheaval, and it still speaks to readers today who are asking how societies can balance innovation with dignity, and prosperity with justice. Bellamy’s legacy lies in his ability to make political imagination feel vivid and personal, influencing reform-minded readers and later generations of writers interested in speculative social worlds. He remains especially rewarding for readers drawn to classic American fiction, social criticism, and stories that ask big questions about how people might live better together.