An 1897 collection of essays selected by H. G. Wells from among the many short essays and ephemeral pieces he had written since 1893. The book consists of thirty-nine pieces ranging from about eight hundred to two thousand words in length. A one-shilling reprint (two shillings in cloth) was issued in 1901 by T. Fisher Unwin. The essays in Certain Personal Matters are written from a consistent first-person perspective, but only one (ironically, given the title) describes an identifiable event in Wells's life-how he responded to being diagnosed with tuberculosis in the fall of 1887