The Sea Lady

The Sea Lady is a fantasy novel written by H. G. Wells that has some of the aspects of a fable. It was serialized from July to December 1901 in Pearson's Magazine before being published as a volume by Methuen. The inspiration for the novel was Wells's glimpse of May Nisbet, the daughter of the Times drama critic, in a bathing suit, when she came to visit at Sandgate, Wells having agreed to pay her school fees after her father's death. Plot The intricately narrated story involves a mermaid who comes ashore on the southern coast of England in 1899. Feigning a desire to become part of genteel society, the mermaid's real design is to seduce Chatteris, a man she saw "some years ago" in "the South Seas-near Tonga," who has taken her fancy. This she reveals in a conversation with the narrator's second cousin Melville, a friend of the family who adopts Miss Waters. As a supernatural being, she is unimpressed with the fact that Chatteris is engaged to a Miss Glendower and is trying to make amends for his wastrel youth by entering politics. In the end, Chatteris is unable to resist the mermaid's alluring charms, though succumbing means his death.