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Pupils at the iMax science museum

Pentax digital camera

Plot summary

The narrative opens in the English village of Iping, West Sussex, with the arrival during a snowstorm of a mysterious stranger at the local inn, The Coach and Horses. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat, and gloves, his face hidden entirely by bandages, large blue goggles and a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, and unfriendly. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. He becomes the talk of the village (one of the novel's most charming aspects is its portrait of small-town life in southern England, which the author knew from first-hand experience).

Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. The Invisible Man has run out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady confronts the stranger to demand that he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of pique. An attempt to apprehend the stranger are frustrated when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs.

There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that record his experiments in optics. But Marvel soon attempts to betray the Invisible Man to the police, and the Invisible Man chases him into the seaside town of Port Burdock, threatening to kill him.

The Invisible Man's furious attempt to avenge his betrayal leads to his being shot. Griffin takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to be that of one Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp he reveals his true identity: the Invisible Man is Griffin, a former medical student who left the field of medicine to devote himself to the physics of optics. Griffin recounts in the course of several chapters how he invented a machine capable of rendering bodies invisible and, on an impulse, performed the invisibility procedure on himself.

Griffin burns down the boarding house to cover his tracks, but soon realizes he is ill-equipped to survive in the open. He steals some clothing from a theatrical supply shop heads to Iping to attempt reverse the experiment. But now that he imagines he can make Kemp his confederate, he describes a plan to begin a "Reign of Terror" by using his invisibility to terrorize the nation with Kemp as his secret confederate.

Kemp has already denounced Griffin to the local authorities and is on the watch for help to arrive as he listens to this wild proposal. When the authorities arrive at Kemp's house, Griffin fights his way out and the next day leaves a note announcing that Kemp himself will be the first man to be killed in the Reign of Terror. Kemp, a cool-headed character, tries to organize a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but a note he sends is stolen from his servant by Griffin.

Griffin shoots a policeman who comes to Kemp's aid, then breaks into Kemp's house. Kemp bolts for the town, where the local citizenry come to his aid. Griffin is seized, assaulted, and killed by a mob. The Invisible Man's naked battered body gradually becomes visible as he dies.

In the final chapter we learn that Marvel, who has set himself up as a pubkeeper, has secretly kept Griffin's notes.