The Truth About Pyecraft
short story by H. G. Wells
"The Truth About Pyecraft" is a British fantasy-comedy short story by H. G. Wells. It was originally published in The Strand Magazine (April 1903), and then included in the Twelve Stories and a Dream story collection, in 1903. It has been frequently reprinted.
Plot summary
The repellently fat Mr. Pyecraft is a patron of a London club, who usually pesters Mr. Formalyn, to the point that the latter eventually decides to write Pyecraft's true story, for revealing an unbelievable, yet embarrassing, secret which is shared by both.
In the beginning of Formalyn's account, the rotund Pyecraft usually annoys him, with his boring stories and particularly about his obesity troubles. Eventually, Formalyn brings an occult weight-loss recipe of his Hindustani great-grandmother, and Pyecraft tries it for some time. Then, Pyecraft telegraphs Formalyn at the club, calling him to Pyecraft's house in Bloomsbury, where the housekeeper tells him that Pyecraft has been cloistered in his own living room for the last twenty-four hours. There, he is found, as rounded as ever, floating helplessly in the air, against the ceiling.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7770638. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1903.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Truth About Pyecraft” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.