"Book the Second: The Story of the Clissolds—My Father and the Flow of Things" recounts the upbringing of William Clissold and his brother Dickon, which was violently disrupted by the suicide of their businessman father, Richard Clissold, after he was convicted and sentenced to prison for fraud; it includes long passages on "systems in history," the ideas of Karl Marx, and the development of the institution of money.

"Book the Fifth: The Story of the Clissolds—The Next Phase" is almost exclusively devoted to developing the notion of a worldwide "open conspiracy" of business leaders, politicians, scientists, and intellectuals to establish a "World Republic" devoted to the betterment of human life (a dominant notion in Wells's later life that is developed at length here for the first time[5]).

"Book the Sixth: The Story of the Clissolds—Venus as Evening Star" is an extended analysis of the relations between men and women, and culminates in his decision to marry Clementina.

But critical reactions to the work were often negative and sometimes scathing, though John Maynard Keynes, George Bernard Shaw, Graham Wallas, and H.L.

"[7] Biographer David Smith called The World of William Clissold "a watershed book in H. G. Wells's fiction," marking a turn to increasingly didactive narratives.