# Mr. Mortimer Wells — A Prefect’s Uncle character guide

> Mr. Mortimer Wells in A Prefect’s Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Mr. Wells, Wells

**First appearance:** 0000-i-term-begins

## Snapshot

A visiting literary gentleman whose superior smile and merciless critiques of a schoolboy's verses set off a quiet scandal of authorship.

## Who they are

Mr. Wells is a guest of the Headmaster, a man who takes up a cause from pure love of argument and delivers his opinions with the air of one conferring a favour. Asked to read and comment on a prize poem, he picks it apart couplet by couplet, only to have the poem's true author—Mr. Lawrie—reveal himself in the same room. His smug demolition of the verses matters because it exposes the vanity of literary judgment and sets the school's grown-ups squabbling while the boys' own dramas unfold.

## In the story

### [Versus Charchester (At Charchester)](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_prefect_s_uncle_se/chapters/xv-versus-charchester-at-charchester)

Visits the Headmaster and criticizes the quality of the school's poetry prize entries, arguing that the boy mind is incapable of poetry.

### [A Disputed Authorship](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_prefect_s_uncle_se/chapters/xvi-a-disputed-authorship)

Reads and criticizes the poem during the meeting with the Headmaster and Mr. Lawrie.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_prefect_s_uncle_se/characters/mr_mortimer_wells
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_prefect_s_uncle_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_prefect_s_uncle_se/characters