The New Machiavelli was first serialized in The English Review in 1910. Because its plot notoriously derived from Wells's affair with Amber Reeves and satirized Beatrice and Sidney Webb, it was 'the literary scandal of its day.' The novel's principal themes are politics and sex, both abiding preoccupations of the author. The development of political and sexual passion in the protagonist is traced in intricate detail; the artificiality of Victorian and Edwardian morality being novel's chief target.