A mysterious stranger arrives at a quiet country inn at night. He is fully clothed, with even his face swathed in bandages. With the arrival of this stranger, bizarre incidents start happening
in the neighbourhood - doors open and close on their own, voices are heard but no one is seen - a case of vox et praeterea nihil, that is, ’voice and nothing more’. As the story progresses, the
strange changes to the macabre. A scientist conducts a seemingly impossible experiment on himself and becomes invisible. However, not only his body, but his mind also transforms for the worse.
He becomes a homicidal maniac, with a complete disregard for human life or property. His first appearance is in the neighbourhood of Iping, where he arrives fully clothed and wrapped up in
bandages. His demeanour evokes the curiosity of the landlady of the Coaches and Horses inn, where he lodges. His unusual behaviour gradually incites the curiosity of the locals, like Mr Cuss
who goes to ’interview’ the stranger only to have his nose ’nipped’ by an invisible thumb and finger. Gradually, the stranger exploits his power of invisibility to steal at the vicarage,
terrorize the local people, and finally escape the neighbourhood of Iping amidst much chaos and confusion. However, he is not able to take his belongings with him. He then employs the services
of a tramp, Mr Marvel, whom he subjects to threats and corporal punishment to retrieve his books from the Coaches and Horses. As Marvel does his bidding, the Invisible Man helps him escape the
village by hurting a lot of people. Eventually, the existence of the Invisible Man flashes in the newspapers, which concerns Marvel greatly, as the latter has been his accomplice in creating
the ruckus in Iping. Marvel finally betrays him, making off with the money that the Invisible Man had stolen and put in his pocket, as well as the books that he had retrieved from the inn. In
pursuit of the defector, the Invisible Man gets hurt and takes shelter in the house of a fellow scientist, Dr Kemp. It is at Dr Kemp’s house that the Invisible Man reveals his identity as
Griffin, a student who was Kemp’s junior at the University. Griffin tells Kemp about his experiment, and expects the latter to be sympathetic to his cause, as both are men of science. However,
Dr Kemp soon finds out about Griffin’s acts of violence from the various newspaper reports. Realizing that the Invisible Man was a homicidal maniac, Kemp decides to hand him over to the
authorities. He writes a letter to a colonel, and with his efforts, the long run of rampage of the Invisible Man is brought to an end. The Invisible Man was initially published in a serialized
format in the Pearson’s Weekly in 1897. The same year, all the pieces were compiled and published as a novel. Since its first publication, the novel has captured the imagination of readers and
audiences around the world. In it H G Wells spins a gripping tale of psychological terror, wherein a scientist who cannot reverse his own experiment must now inhabit a world where he is unseen
- a world that is to be the crucible of his Reign of Terror. The novel has been adapted into films, TV series, drama, radio, and cartoons. Furthermore, the story has led to new sequels and
derivatives such as The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Woman, The Invisible Agent, The Invisible Man’s Revenge, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, and many others.
