Narrator George Ponderevo chronicles how he and his uncle Edward built a vast, hollow commercial empire on a worthless patent tonic, Tono-Bungay, before it all collapses in fraud and ruin.
Books mentioned in Tono-Bungay (9)
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine: “So I read and understood the good sound rhetoric of Tom Paine's "Rights of Man," and his "Common Sense," excellent books, once praised by bishops and since sedulously lied about.”
Common Sense by Thomas Paine: “So I read and understood the good sound rhetoric of Tom Paine's "Rights of Man," and his "Common Sense," excellent books, once praised by bishops and since sedulously lied about.”
Candide by Voltaire: “Then I remember also a translation of Voltaire's "Candide," and "Rasselas;" and, vast book though it was, I really believe I read, in a muzzy sort of way of course, from end to end, and even with some reference now and then to the Atlas, Gibbon--in twelve volumes.”
Rasselas by Samuel Johnson: “Then I remember also a translation of Voltaire's "Candide," and "Rasselas;" and, vast book though it was, I really believe I read, in a muzzy sort of way of course, from end to end, and even with some reference now and then to the Atlas, Gibbon--in twelve volumes.”
Vathek by William Beckford: “I remember that among others I tried a translation of Plato's "Republic" then, and found extraordinarily little interest in it; I was much too young for that; but "Vathek"--"Vathek" was glorious stuff.”
The Republic by Plato: “I remember that among others I tried a translation of Plato's "Republic" then, and found extraordinarily little interest in it; I was much too young for that; but "Vathek"--"Vathek" was glorious stuff.”
The Woman Who Did by Grant Allen: “I had read widely and confusedly "Vathek," Shelley, Tom Paine, Plutarch, Carlyle, Haeckel, William Morris, the Bible, the Freethinker, the Clarion, "The Woman Who Did,"--I mention the ingredients that come first to mind.”
The God in the Car by Anthony Hope: “It would appear that she called him her "God in the Car"--after the hero in a novel of Anthony Hope's.”
Napoleon and the Fair Sex by Frédéric Masson: “…than he would otherwise have been, but of that I cannot be sure, and it certainly caused my aunt a considerable amount of vexation after he had read Napoleon and the Fair Sex, because for a time that roused him to a sense of a side of life he had in his commercial preoccupations very largely…”
Books that mention Tono-Bungay (4)
The Secret City by Hugh Walpole: “Tess is the thing, you know, and Tono-Bungay”
The Trail of the Hawk by Sinclair Lewis: “that book by Wells, _Tono-Bungay_, that's got aerial experiments in it”
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis: “there are books like ‘Ethan Frome’ and ‘Père Goriot’ and ‘Tono-Bungay’ and Renan’s Jesus”
Words Are My Matter by Ursula K. Le Guin: “Even such a realistic novel of commonplace contemporary life as Tono-Bungay includes a haunting, terribly prescient vision of radioactivity...”