Chance meetings with Sid, who has become a socialist, and then with Ann, who is now a housemaid, lead Kipps to abandon social conventions and his engagement to Helen, and marry his childhood sweetheart.

In Book III, "Kippses", the attempt to find a house suitable to his new status precipitates Kipps back into a struggle with the "complex and difficult" English social system.

Kipps is a rags-to-riches study in class differences, and the novel's chief dramatic interest is in how the protagonist negotiates the intellectual, moral and emotional difficulties that come with wealth and a change of social status.

A narrator's voice offers occasional comments, but only towards the end of the novel does this voice speak out in a page-long denunciation of "the ruling power of this land, Stupidity," which is "a monster, a lumpish monster, like some great clumsy griffin thing, like the Crystal Palace labyrinthodon, like Coote, like the leaden Goddess of the Dunciad, like some fat, proud flunkey, like pride, like indolence, like all that is darkening and heavy and obstructive in life".

"[7] At one time Wells intended to develop Masterman into a major character who would convert Kipps to socialism, and he wrote several versions in which he played an important role at the end of the novel.

'"[9] Wells worked on Kipps for seven years, completing a draft entitled The Wealth of Mr Waddy in January 1899 and finishing the novel as it now exists in May 1904.

[10] Kipps changed considerably over this period of extended drafting: the manuscript, now in the Wells Archive at the University of Illinois, consists of more than 6,000 sheets, and includes, in the words of Harris Wilson, "literally scores of false starts, digressions, and abandoned episodes.

This disproportion reflects the fact that originally the third Book contained an extended episode in which the consumptive socialist Masterman visits Kipps in Hythe and dies slowly, lecturing about revolution as he goes and speculating about the possibilities of utopian communism.

"[12] Wells was eager for the novel to succeed, and he harassed his publisher, Macmillan, with ideas for unorthodox publicity stunts, such as sending men with sandwich boards into the theatre district in the West End of London, or posters saying "Kipps Worked Here" outside Portsmouth & Southsea Railway Station.