As George Orwell wrote in 1940, “Everyone who has ever read When the Sleeper Wakes remembers it.” Graham, the “sleeper” of the title, falls into a cataleptic trance in 1897. Graham will survive on life support for 203 years, suddenly waking in 2100. He wakes to a London encased in a glass dome, in which the Victorian class system has hardened into castes and a revolution is brewing. An important influence on later dystopian novels, Sleeper is a deeply pessimistic book, although Wells could not resist an ending ambiguous enough to permit the reader a faint gleam of optimism.

The novel was re-written and published in 1908 as The Sleeper Awakes, but this edition preserves the original version. Historical appendices include contemporary reviews, Henri Lanos illustrations from The Graphic, and other utopian fiction from the period.