Rowland Palace is a novelist married to a distant cousin, Brynhild, a "Quiet Lovely" who is twelve years younger than he. Inordinately sensitive to criticism, Palace has been withdrawing from a wife who is becoming critical of him. When he decides he needs to engage a publicist to cultivate his neglected public image, he hides his plan. Brynhild is principally a literary satire in which Wells mocks developments in the contemporary literary scene in Great Britain, especially with respect to publicity. The novel also scrutinises marital misunderstanding in a comic vein.