In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are ver...

In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are ver...

In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are ver...

The Food of the Gods I call it, this substance that Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood made between them; and having regard now to what it has already done and all that it is certainly going to do, ...

The idea was Mr. Bensington’s. But as it was suggested to him by one of Professor Redwood’s contributions to the Philosophical Transactions, he very properly consulted that gentleman before he carried...

The night after his conversation with Redwood Mr. Bensington could scarcely sleep a wink. He did seem once to get into a sort of doze, but it was only for a moment, and then he dreamt he had dug a dee...

Mr. Bensington proposed originally to try this stuff, so soon as he was really able to prepare it, upon tadpoles. One always does try this sort of thing upon tadpoles to begin with; this being what ta...

Mr. Bensington proposed originally to try this stuff, so soon as he was really able to prepare it, upon tadpoles. One always does try this sort of thing upon tadpoles to begin with; this being what ta...

Experimental work is the most tedious thing in the world (unless it be the reports of it in the Philosophical Transactions), and it seemed a long time to Mr. Bensington before his first dream of enorm...

“That’s no chick,” said Mr. Bensington’s cousin Jane. “Well, I should think I knew a chick when I saw it,” said Mr. Bensington’s cousin Jane hotly. “It’s too big for a chick, for one thing, and beside...

That happened early in June. For some weeks Bensington was kept from revisiting the Experimental Farm by a severe imaginary catarrh, and one necessary flying visit was made by Redwood. He returned an ...

The flat was occupied, it seemed to him⁠—to the exclusion of all other sensible objects⁠—by Mr. Skinner and his voice, if indeed you can call either him or it a sensible object! The voice was up very ...

Mr. Skinner might have foregone his chief anxiety. Mrs. Skinner did not stop out her day. About eleven the canary creeper, which had been quietly active all the morning, began to clamber over the wind...

So far as I can gather, the pullets came into Hickleybrow about three o’clock in the afternoon. Their coming must have been a brisk affair, though nobody was out in the street to see it. The violent b...

When the unfortunate Skinner got out of the Southeastern train at Urshot that evening it was already nearly dusk. The train was late, but not inordinately late⁠—and Mr. Skinner remarked as much to the...

It was two nights after the disappearance of Mr. Skinner that the Podbourne doctor was out late near Hankey, driving in his buggy. He had been up all night assisting another undistinguished citizen in...

It was two nights after the disappearance of Mr. Skinner that the Podbourne doctor was out late near Hankey, driving in his buggy. He had been up all night assisting another undistinguished citizen in...

Redwood went round, to Bensington about eleven the next morning with the “second editions” of three evening papers in his hand. Bensington looked up from a despondent meditation over the forgotten pag...

Cossar, the well-known civil engineer, found them in the great doorway of the flat mansions, Redwood holding out the damp pink paper, and Bensington on tiptoe reading over his arm. Cossar was a large-...

By five o’clock that evening this amazing Cossar, with no appearance of hurry at all, had got all the stuff for his fight with insurgent Bigness out of Urshot and on the road to Hickleybrow. Two barre...

This incident left the party alert but not unstrung. They got their stores into the house, which had evidently been ransacked by the rats after the flight of Mrs. Skinner, and four of the men took the...

When the expedition had finished refreshment, the night had fully come. The stars were at their brightest, and a growing pallor towards Hankey heralded the moon. The watch on the rat-holes had been ma...

There were moments during that wonderful night when it seemed to Bensington that he was planned by nature for a life of fantastic adventure. This was particularly the case for an hour or so after he h...

And while these eight adventurers fought with rats about the Experimental Farm, nine miles away, in the village of Cheasing Eyebright, an old lady with an excessive nose struggled with great difficult...

For a time at least the spreading circle of residual consequences about the Experimental Farm must pass out of the focus of our narrative⁠—how for a long time a power of bigness, in fungus and toadsto...

For a time at least the spreading circle of residual consequences about the Experimental Farm must pass out of the focus of our narrative⁠—how for a long time a power of bigness, in fungus and toadsto...

Amidst the complex and confused happenings, the impacts from the great outer world that constituted Mr. Bensington’s fame, a shining and active figure presently became conspicuous⁠—became almost, as i...

It was only a few days after this that Redwood opened his paper to find that the Prime Minister had promised a Royal Commission on Boomfood. This sent him, newspaper in hand, round to Bensington’s fla...

When Winkles had gone Bensington came and stood on the hearthrug and looked down at Redwood. “Her Serene Highness!” he remarked. “Her Serene Highness!” said Redwood. “It’s the Princess of Weser Dreibu...

There is, it seems, an upward limit to the pride of maternity, and this in the case of Mrs. Redwood was reached when her offspring completed his sixth month of terrestrial existence, broke down his hi...

Before the year was out there were, in addition to Redwood’s pioneer vehicle, quite a number of motor-perambulators to be seen in the west of London. I am told there were as many as eleven; but the mo...

It was while the Royal Commission on Boomfood was preparing its report that Herakleophorbia really began to demonstrate its capacity for leakage. And the earliness of this second outbreak was the more...

It was while the Royal Commission on Boomfood was preparing its report that Herakleophorbia really began to demonstrate its capacity for leakage. And the earliness of this second outbreak was the more...

Such were the circumstances by which the world had its first notification that the Food was loose again. In another week Keston Common was in full operation as what naturalists call a centre of distri...

This little man who started the whole thing passes out of the story, and after a time he passed altogether out of the world of things, visible and tellable. But because he started the whole thing it i...

Our theme, which began so compactly in Mr. Bensington’s study, has already spread and branched, until it points this way and that, and henceforth our whole story is one of dissemination. To follow the...

Our theme, which began so compactly in Mr. Bensington’s study, has already spread and branched, until it points this way and that, and henceforth our whole story is one of dissemination. To follow the...

Our theme, which began so compactly in Mr. Bensington’s study, has already spread and branched, until it points this way and that, and henceforth our whole story is one of dissemination. To follow the...

Cheasing Eyebright had of course a Vicar. There are vicars and vicars, and of all sorts I love an innovating vicar⁠—a piebald progressive professional reactionary⁠—the least. But the Vicar of Cheasing...

No one knows what the Vicar made of the giant puffballs. No doubt he was among the first to discover them. They were scattered at intervals up and down the path between the near down and the village e...

The growth of the puffballs following on the expansion of the Caddles’ baby really ought to have opened the Vicar’s eyes. The latter fact had already come right into his arms at the christening⁠—almos...

“Tut, tut!” said the Vicar to his breakfast things⁠—the day after the coming of Mrs. Skinner. “Tut, tut! what’s this?” and poised his glasses at his paper with a general air of remonstrance. “Giant wa...

It was a day or so after this conversation⁠—a day or so, that is, after the burning of the Experimental Farm⁠—that Winkles came to Redwood and showed him an insulting letter. It was an anonymous lette...

But even so secluded a place as Cheasing Eyebright could not rest for long in the theory of hypertrophy⁠—Contagious or not⁠—in view of the growing hubbub about the Food. In a little while there were p...

The giant child was ugly⁠—the Vicar would insist. “He always had been ugly⁠—as all excessive things must be.” The Vicar’s views had carried him out of sight of just judgment in this matter. The child ...

The giant child was ugly⁠—the Vicar would insist. “He always had been ugly⁠—as all excessive things must be.” The Vicar’s views had carried him out of sight of just judgment in this matter. The child ...

He had his bad days. There was, for example, that trouble with the river. He made little boats out of whole newspapers, an art he learnt by watching the Spender boy, and he set them sailing down the s...

Immediately after that affair Lady Wondershoot, casting about for exemplary additions to the abuse and fastings she had inflicted, issued a ukase. She issued it first to her butler, and very suddenly,...

But soon the Food was to enter upon a new phase of its work in him. In spite of the simple instructions of the Vicar⁠—instructions intended to round off the modest natural life befitting a giant peasa...

He was thinking too four years after, when the Vicar, now no longer ripe but overripe, saw him for the last time of all. You figure the old gentleman visibly a little older now, slacker in his girth, ...

Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years. To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm. But to one ma...

Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years. To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm. But to one ma...

Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years. To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm. But to one ma...

It had been the purpose of the younger brother to do a very magnificent thing, to celebrate this return to life by a dinner at some restaurant of indisputable quality, a dinner that should be followed...

The tallest and strongest and most regarded of all the children of the Food were the three sons of Cossar. The mile or so of land near Sevenoaks in which their boyhood passed became so trenched, so du...

That had been in the boyhood of the Sons, but now they were nearly men. And the chains had been tightening upon them, and tightening with every year of growth. Each year they grew, and the Food spread...

It chanced too that a young man who was not a giant was delivering his soul about these sons of Cossar just at that same time. He had come over the hills beyond Sevenoaks, he and his friend, and he it...

Now it chanced in the days when Caterham was campaigning against the Boom-children before the General Election that was⁠—amidst the most tragic and terrible circumstances⁠—to bring him into power, tha...

Now it chanced in the days when Caterham was campaigning against the Boom-children before the General Election that was⁠—amidst the most tragic and terrible circumstances⁠—to bring him into power, tha...

“Tell me,” she said, and young Redwood, tremulous and excited, set himself to tell her⁠—it was poor and broken telling for a time⁠—of the Food of the Gods and the giant children who were scattered ove...

These two met altogether fourteen times before the beginning of the end. They met in the Great Park or on the heights and among the gorges of the rusty-roaded, heathery moorland, set with dusky pinewo...

“They say that we must part,” the Princess said to her lover. “But why?” he cried. “What new folly have these people got into their heads?” “Do you know,” she asked, “that to love me⁠—is high treason?...

He did not come to their next meeting until she had waited some time. They were to meet that day about midday in a great space of park that fitted into a bend of the river, and as she waited, looking ...

All unaware of the trend of events, unaware of the laws that were closing in upon all the Brethren, unaware indeed that there lived a Brother for him on the earth, young Caddles chose this time to com...

All unaware of the trend of events, unaware of the laws that were closing in upon all the Brethren, unaware indeed that there lived a Brother for him on the earth, young Caddles chose this time to com...

I think of young Caddles always as he was seen in the New Kent Road, the sunset warm upon his perplexed and staring face. The road was thick with its varied traffic, omnibuses, trams, vans, carts, tro...

What was he seeking? He wanted something the pygmy world did not give, some end which the pygmy world prevented his attaining, prevented even his seeing clearly, which he was never to see clearly. It ...

The wandering of Caddles about London came to a head on the second day in the morning. For then his hunger overcame him. He hesitated where the hot-smelling loaves were being tossed into a cart, and t...

So soon as Caterham knew the moment for grasping his nettle had come, he took the law into his own hands and sent to arrest Cossar and Redwood. Redwood was there for the taking. He had been undergoing...

So soon as Caterham knew the moment for grasping his nettle had come, he took the law into his own hands and sent to arrest Cossar and Redwood. Redwood was there for the taking. He had been undergoing...

After that Redwood spent most of his time at the windows. But the windows offered him little of the march of events outside. It was a quiet street at all times, and that day it was unusually quiet: sc...

For thirty-six long hours did Redwood remain imprisoned, closed in and shut off from the great drama of the Two Days, while the little people in the dawn of greatness fought against the Children of th...

His encounter with Caterham was entirely different from his anticipation. He had seen the man only twice in his life, once at dinner and once in the lobby of the House, and his imagination had been ac...

Presently Redwood found himself in a train going south over the Thames. He had a brief vision of the river shining under its lights, and of the smoke still going up from the place where the shell had ...

Presently Redwood found himself in a train going south over the Thames. He had a brief vision of the river shining under its lights, and of the smoke still going up from the place where the shell had ...

“Where is my son?” said Redwood. “He is all right. The Giants are waiting for your message.” “Yes, but my son⁠—⁠ ⁠…” He passed with Cossar down a long slanting tunnel that was lit red for a moment and...

After devious windings and ascents they came out upon a projecting ledge from which it was possible to see over the greater extent of the Giants’ pit, and from which Redwood might make himself heard b...