# In the Days of the Comet — Character guide

> Key figures in In the Days of the Comet by H. G. Wells.

- [Willie Leadford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/willie_leadford.md): Willie scrapes by as third man in Rawdon's office, walks home debating religion and Socialism with Parload, and nurses a fierce, class-bitter love for Nettie Stuart. His jealousy of young Verrall curdles into something d
- [Nettie Stuart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/nettie_stuart.md): Nettie grew up in the cottage at Checkshill Towers, schoolfellow and second cousin to Willie, and pledged herself to him one July dusk beside the goldfish pond. She is beautiful, self-possessed, and quietly ambitious for
- [Edward Verrall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/edward_verrall.md): Young Verrall has university honors, talk of a parliamentary seat, and a habit of taking as a matter of course what Willie would face the rack to get. He meets Willie on a disputed footpath with amiable challenge and get
- [Mr. Gabbitas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/mr_gabbitas.md): The Rev. E. B. Gabbitas is the local intellectual, mentor, and sparring partner whose drawing-room hosts Willie's half-learned heresies and whose face flushes when the higher criticism is invoked. He is flattered by the 
- [Parload](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/parload.md): Parload is Willie's closest friend — fellow socialist, fellow doubter, met in the Y.M.C.A. Parliament and kept through evening classes and Sunday suppers. He is gawky, capable of vast enthusiasm, and utterly possessed by
- [Mrs. Verrall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/old_mrs_verrall.md): Mrs. Verrall belongs to the family that owns the great estate, the collieries, and more than half of Rawdon's pot-bank; her arrival at a Clayton doorstep is a small social earthquake. She is glimpsed through windows and 
- [Melmount](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/melmount.md): Melmount moves through the corridors of power in the old order, a figure whose influence extends far beyond any single nation or faction. His distinctive tension lies in balancing the machinery of governance against the 
- [Lord Redcar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/lord_redcar.md): Lord Redcar belongs to the leisured class of the old world, moving easily through the social circles that Willie Leadford can only glimpse from outside. His tension is the gap between aristocratic ease and the raw urgenc
- [Anna Reeves](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/anna_reeves.md): Anna Reeves enters Willie Leadford's life as a blue-clad, white-aproned nurse tending his dying mother, one of those hidden, unthanked women who held the old world's suffering together. She is three years older than Will
- [Mrs. Leadford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/my_poor_old_mother.md): Mrs. Leadford is a working-class widow in the industrial Midlands, her life narrowed by poverty and her health failing as the comet approaches. In her final illness she tells Willie the story of the baby sister he never 
- [Pettigrew](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/pettigrew.md): An elderly socialist and friend of Gabbitas, active in local politics.
- [Rawdon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/rawdon.md): A local businessman and political figure, often in conflict with the socialists.
- [Madgett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/madgett.md): A socialist colleague of Willie's, involved in local organizing.
- [Miss Ramell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/miss_ramell.md): A young woman who appears in the new world after the Change.
- [Swindells](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/swindells.md): A local tradesman and minor character in Willie's hometown.
- [Mrs. Stuart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/mrs_stuart.md): Nettie's mother, a working-class woman concerned for her daughter.
- [Mitchell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/mitchell.md): A minor character mentioned in the political circles of the town.
- [Burble](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/burble.md): A minor socialist orator and acquaintance of Willie.
- [Laycock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/laycock.md): A minor character in the socialist group.
- [Carton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/carton.md): A minor character mentioned in the political context.
- [Gurker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters/gurker.md): A wealthy financier and political figure in the old world.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/in_the_days_of_the_comet_se/characters