This is a novella by H. G. Wells consisting of five chapters first published in the June to October 1899 issues of The Pall Mall Magazine. It was later included in an 1899 collection of Wells's short stories Tales of Space and Time.
The story appears to be set in the same London of the future as the long novel The Sleeper Wakes also published in 1899. The text can be said to have two components: 1. the plot and 2. lengthy descriptions of what the society of the future and all its attendant technology will look like.