Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905.
Orphaned at an early age, raised by his aunt and uncle, and apprenticed for seven years to a draper, Artie Kipps is stunned to discover upon reading a newspaper advertisement that he is the grandson of a wealthy gentleman – and the inheritor of his fortune. Thrown dramatically into the upper classes, he struggles desperately to learn the etiquette and rules of polite society. But as he soon discovers, becoming a ‘true gentleman’ is neither as easy nor as desirable as it at first appears.
Kipps was adapted for the stage in the early 1960s as Half a Sixpence; Half a Sixpence has itself been revived and updated in a new production at the Chichester Festival Theatre in July 2016.
Arthur Linfoot wrote that he “read a good bit of Kipps” on 24th September 1916, while stationed at the military hospital at Méteren in Northern France.