Our hero, Mr. Hoopdriver, is a frustrated "draper's assistant" in Putney. He is badly paid and overworked. Wells briefly worked in such a job. Mr. Hoopdriver owns a bicycle, and he sets out on a bicycling tour of "the Southern Coast" on his annual ten-day holiday and escapes the dreariness of ordinary life into an imaginary world of fantasy. Wells wrote this at the height of the bicycling craze and before the automobile. The bicycle gave freedom to the working class, weakened the English class structure and gave a boost to female emancipation. In his story he explores these changes.
