Hg Wells

Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' (sf-encyclopedia.com). Retrieved 22 August 2015. Entry by 'JC/BS' John Clute and Brian Stableford. (21 September 186613 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography and autobiography. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and has been called the "father of science fiction."

In addition to his fame as a writer, he was prominent in his lifetime as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction", while Charles Fort called him a "wild talent".

Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption per work – dubbed "Wells's law" – leading Joseph Conrad to hail him in 1898 with "O Realist of the Fantastic!". His most notable science fiction works include ''The Time Machine'' (1895), which was his first novel, '' The Island of Doctor Moreau'' (1896), ''The Invisible Man'' (1897), ''The War of the Worlds'' (1898), the military science fiction ''The War in the Air'' (1907), and the dystopian '' When the Sleeper Wakes'' (1910). Novels of social realism such as ''Kipps'' (1905) and '' The History of Mr Polly'' (1910), which describe lower-middle-class English life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in ''Tono-Bungay'' (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a Darwinian context. He was also an outspoken socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. In his later years, he wrote less fiction and more works expounding his political and social views, sometimes giving his profession as that of journalist. Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK) in 1934.

Life

Early life

Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House, 162 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Called "Bertie" by his family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells, a former domestic gardener, and at the time a shopkeeper and professional cricketer and Sarah Neal, a former domestic servant. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper: the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn a meagre income, but little of it came from the shop and he received an unsteady amount of money from playing professional cricket for the Kent county team.Smith, David C. (1986) ''H. G. Wells: Desperately mortal. A biography.'' Yale University Press, New Haven and London

A defining incident of young Wells's life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he began to read books from the local library, brought to him by his father. He soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access; they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, a private school founded in 1849, following the bankruptcy of Morley's earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, on producing copperplate handwriting and doing the sort of sums useful to tradesmen. Wells continued at Morley's Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income.

No longer able to support themselves financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an unhappy apprenticeship as a draper at Hyde's Drapery Emporium in Southsea. His experiences at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, later inspired his novels '' The Wheels of Chance'', '' The History of Mr Polly'', and ''Kipps'', which portray the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of society's distribution of wealth.

Wells's parents had a turbulent marriage, owing primarily to his mother's being a Protestant and his father's being a freethinker. When his mother returned to work as a lady's maid (at Uppark, a country house in Sussex), one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and remained faithful to each other. As a consequence, Herbert's personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemist's assistant. However, Uppark had a magnificent library in which he immersed himself, reading many classic works, including Plato's ''Republic'', Thomas More's ''Utopia'', and the works of Daniel Defoe. When he became the first doyen of science fiction as a distinct genre of fiction, Wells referenced Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein'' in relation to his works, writing, "they belong to a class of writing which includes the story of ''Frankenstein''."

Teacher

In October 1879, Wells's mother arranged through a distant relative, Arthur Williams, for him to join the National School at Wookey in Somerset as a pupil–teacher, a senior pupil who acted as a teacher of younger children. In December that year, however, Williams was dismissed for irregularities in his qualifications and Wells was returned to Uppark. After a short apprenticeship at a chemist in nearby Midhurst and an even shorter stay as a boarder at Midhurst Grammar School, he signed his apprenticeship papers at Hyde's. In 1883, Wells persuaded his parents to release him from the apprenticeship, taking an opportunity offered by Midhurst Grammar School again to become a pupil–teacher; his proficiency in Latin and science during his earlier short stay had been remembered.

The years he spent in Southsea had been the most miserable of his life to that point, but his good fortune in securing a position at Midhurst Grammar School meant that Wells could continue his self-education in earnest. The following year, Wells won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, now part of Imperial College London) in London, studying biology under Thomas Henry Huxley. As an alumnus, he later helped to set up the Royal College of Science Association, of which he became the first president in 1909. Wells studied in his new school until 1887, with a weekly allowance of 21 shillings (a guinea) thanks to his scholarship. This ought to have been a comfortable sum of money (at the time many working class families had "round about a pound a week" as their entire household income), yet in his ''Experiment in Autobiography'' Wells speaks of constantly being hungry, and indeed photographs of him at the time show a youth who is very thin and malnourished.

He soon entered the Debating Society of the school. These years mark the beginning of his interest in a possible reformation of society. At first approaching the subject through Plato's ''Republic'', he soon turned to contemporary ideas of socialism as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society and free lectures delivered at Kelmscott House, the home of William Morris. He was also among the founders of ''The Science School Journal'', a school magazine that allowed him to express his views on literature and society, as well as trying his hand at fiction; a precursor to his novel ''The Time Machine'' was published in the journal under the title ''The Chronic Argonauts''. The school year 1886–87 was the last year of his studies.

During 1888, Wells stayed in Stoke-on-Trent, living in Basford. The unique environment of The Potteries was certainly an inspiration. He wrote in a letter to a friend from the area that "the district made an immense impression on me." The inspiration for some of his descriptions in ''The War of the Worlds'' is thought to have come from his short time spent here, seeing the iron foundry furnaces burn over the city, shooting huge red light into the skies. His stay in The Potteries also resulted in the macabre short story "The Cone" (1895, contemporaneous with his famous ''The Time Machine''), set in the north of the city.

After teaching for some time, he was briefly on the staff of Holt Academy in Wales – Wells found it necessary to supplement his knowledge relating to educational principles and methodology and entered the College of Preceptors (College of Teachers). He later received his Licentiate and Fellowship FCP diplomas from the college. It was not until 1890 that Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London External Programme. In 1889–90, he managed to find a post as a teacher at Henley House School in London, where he taught A. A. Milne (whose father ran the school). His first published work was a ''Text-Book of Biology'' in two volumes (1893).

Upon leaving the Normal School of Science, Wells was left without a source of income. His aunt Mary—his father's sister-in-law—invited him to stay with her for a while, which solved his immediate problem of accommodation. During his stay at his aunt's residence, he grew increasingly interested in her daughter, Isabel, whom he later courted. To earn money, he began writing short humorous articles for journals such as ''The Pall Mall Gazette'', later collecting these in volume form as '' Select Conversations with an Uncle'' (1895) and '' Certain Personal Matters'' (1897). So prolific did Wells become at this mode of journalism that many of his early pieces remain unidentified. According to David C. Smith, "Most of Wells's occasional pieces have not been collected, and many have not even been identified as his. Wells did not automatically receive the byline his reputation demanded until after 1896 or so ... As a result, many of his early pieces are unknown. It is obvious that many early Wells items have been lost." His success with these shorter pieces encouraged him to write book-length work, and he published his first novel, ''The Time Machine'', in 1895.

Personal life

In 1891, Wells married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells (1865–1931; from 1902 Isabel Mary Smith). The couple agreed to separate in 1894, when he had fallen in love with one of his students, Amy Catherine Robbins (1872–1927; later known as Jane), with whom he moved to Woking, Surrey, in May 1895. They lived in a rented house, 'Lynton' (now No.141), Maybury Road, in the town centre for just under 18 months and married at St Pancras register office in October 1895. His short period in Woking was perhaps the most creative and productive of his whole writing career, for while there he planned and wrote ''The War of the Worlds'' and ''The Time Machine'', completed '' The Island of Doctor Moreau'', wrote and published ''The Wonderful Visit'' and '' The Wheels of Chance'', and began writing two other early books, '' When the Sleeper Wakes'' and ''Love and Mr Lewisham''.
In the run-up to the 143rd anniversary of Wells's birth, Google published a cartoon riddle series with the solution being the coordinates of Woking's nearby Horsell Common—the location of the Martian landings in ''The War Of The Worlds''—described in newspaper article by

In late summer 1896, Wells and Jane moved to a larger house in Worcester Park, near Kingston upon Thames, for two years; this lasted until his poor health took them to Sandgate, near Folkestone, where he constructed a large family home, Spade House, in 1901. He had two sons with Jane: George Philip (known as "Gip"; 1901–1985) and Frank Richard (1903–1982) (grandfather of film director Simon Wells). Jane died on 6 October 1927, in Dunmow, at the age of 55, which left Wells devastated. She was cremated at Golders Green, with friends of the couple present including George Bernard Shaw.

Wells had affairs with a significant number of women. Dorothy Richardson was a friend and they had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and then miscarriage, in 1907. Wells was married to a former schoolmate of Richardson's. In December 1909, he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeves, whose parents, William and Maud Pember Reeves, he had met through the Fabian Society. Amber had married the barrister G. R. Blanco White in July of that year, as co-arranged by Wells. After Beatrice Webb voiced disapproval of Wells's "sordid intrigue" with Amber, he responded by lampooning Beatrice Webb and her husband Sidney Webb in his 1911 novel ''The New Machiavelli'' as 'Altiora and Oscar Bailey', a pair of short-sighted, bourgeois manipulators. Between 1910 and 1913, novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was one of his mistresses. In 1914, he had a son, Anthony West (1914–1987), by the novelist and feminist Rebecca West, 26 years his junior. In 1920–21, and intermittently until his death, he had a love affair with the American birth control activist Margaret Sanger.

Between 1924 and 1933 he partnered with the 22-year-younger Dutch adventurer and writer Odette Keun, with whom he lived in ''Lou Pidou'', a house they built together in Grasse, France. Wells dedicated his longest book to her ('' The World of William Clissold'', 1926). When visiting Maxim Gorky in Russia 1920, he had slept with Gorky's mistress Moura Budberg, then still Countess Benckendorf and 27 years his junior. In 1933, when she left Gorky and emigrated to London, their relationship renewed and she cared for him through his final illness. Wells repeatedly asked her to marry him, but Budberg strongly rejected his proposals.

In ''Experiment in Autobiography'' (1934), Wells wrote: "I was never a great amorist, though I have loved several people very deeply". David Lodge's novel ''A Man of Parts'' (2011)—a 'narrative based on factual sources' (author's note)—gives a convincing and generally sympathetic account of Wells's relations with the women mentioned above, and others.

Director Simon Wells (born 1961), the author's great-grandson, was a consultant on the future scenes in ''Back to the Future Part II'' (1989).

Artist

One of the ways that Wells expressed himself was through his drawings and sketches. One common location for these was the endpapers and title pages of his own diaries, and they covered a wide variety of topics, from political commentary to his feelings toward his literary contemporaries and his current romantic interests. During his marriage to Amy Catherine, whom he nicknamed Jane, he drew a considerable number of pictures, many of them being overt comments on their marriage. During this period, he called these pictures "picshuas". These picshuas have been the topic of study by Wells scholars for many years, and in 2006, a book was published on the subject.

Writer

Some of his early novels, called "scientific romances", invented several themes now classic in science fiction in such works as ''The Time Machine'', '' The Island of Doctor Moreau'', ''The Invisible Man'', ''The War of the Worlds'', '' When the Sleeper Wakes'', and ''The First Men in the Moon''. He also wrote realistic novels that received critical acclaim, including ''Kipps'' and a critique of English culture during the Edwardian period, ''Tono-Bungay''. Wells also wrote dozens of short stories and novellas, including, "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid", which helped bring the full impact of Darwin's revolutionary botanical ideas to a wider public, and was followed by many later successes such as " The Country of the Blind" (1904).

According to James E. Gunn, one of Wells's major contributions to the science fiction genre was his approach, which he referred to as his "new system of ideas". In his opinion, the author should always strive to make the story as credible as possible, even if both the writer and the reader knew certain elements are impossible, allowing the reader to accept the ideas as something that could really happen, today referred to as "the plausible impossible" and "suspension of disbelief". While neither invisibility nor time travel was new in speculative fiction, Wells added a sense of realism to the concepts which the readers were not familiar with. He conceived the idea of using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time. The term " time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle. He explained that while writing ''The Time Machine'', he realized that "the more impossible the story I had to tell, the more ordinary must be the setting, and the circumstances in which I now set the Time Traveller were all that I could imagine of solid upper-class comforts." In "Wells's Law", a science fiction story should contain only a single extraordinary assumption. Therefore, as justifications for the impossible, he employed scientific ideas and theories. Wells's best-known statement of the "law" appears in his introduction to a collection of his works published in 1934:

As soon as the magic trick has been done the whole business of the fantasy writer is to keep everything else human and real. Touches of prosaic detail are imperative and a rigorous adherence to the hypothesis. Any extra fantasy outside the cardinal assumption immediately gives a touch of irresponsible silliness to the invention.

Dr. Griffin / The Invisible Man is a brilliant research scientist who discovers a method of invisibility, but finds himself unable to reverse the process. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has become an iconic character in horror fiction. ''The Island of Doctor Moreau'' sees a shipwrecked man left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection. The earliest depiction of uplift, the novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. In ''The First Men in the Moon'' Wells used the idea of radio communication between astronomical objects, a plot point inspired by Nikola Tesla's claim that he had received radio signals from Mars. In addition to science fiction, Wells produced work dealing with mythological beings like an angel in ''The Wonderful Visit'' (1895) and a mermaid in ''The Sea Lady'' (1902).

Though ''Tono-Bungay'' is not a science-fiction novel, radioactive decay plays a small but consequential role in it. Radioactive decay plays a much larger role in ''The World Set Free'' (1914), a book dedicated to Frederick Soddy who would receive a Nobel for proving the existence of radioactive isotopes. This book contains what is surely Wells's biggest prophetic "hit", with the first description of a nuclear weapon (which he termed "atomic bombs"). Scientists of the day were well aware that the natural decay of radium releases energy at a slow rate over thousands of years. The ''rate'' of release is too slow to have practical utility, but the ''total amount'' released is huge. Wells's novel revolves around an (unspecified) invention that accelerates the process of radioactive decay, producing bombs that explode with no more than the force of ordinary high explosives—but which "continue to explode" for days on end. "Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century, than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible ... utthey did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands". In 1932, the physicist and conceiver of nuclear chain reaction Leó Szilárd read ''The World Set Free'' (the same year Sir James Chadwick discovered the neutron), a book which he wrote in his memoirs had made "a very great impression on me." In 1934, Szilárd took his ideas for a chain reaction to the British War Office and later the Admiralty, assigning his patent to the Admiralty to keep the news from reaching the notice of the wider scientific community. He wrote, "Knowing what this chain reactionwould mean—and I knew it because I had read H. G. Wells—I did not want this patent to become public."

Wells also wrote non-fiction. His first non-fiction bestseller was '' Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought'' (1901). When originally serialised in a magazine it was subtitled "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work. It offered the immediate political message of the privileged sections of society continuing to bar capable men from other classes from advancement until war would force a need to employ those most able, rather than the traditional upper classes, as leaders. Anticipating what the world would be like in the year 2000, the book is interesting both for its hits (trains and cars resulting in the dispersion of populations from cities to suburbs; moral restrictions declining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of German militarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did not expect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that "my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew and founder at sea").

His bestselling two-volume work, ''The Outline of History'' (1920), began a new era of popularised world history. It received a mixed critical response from professional historians. However, it was very popular amongst the general population and made Wells a rich man. Many other authors followed with "Outlines" of their own in other subjects. He reprised his ''Outline'' in 1922 with a much shorter popular work, '' A Short History of the World'', a history book praised by Albert Einstein, and two long efforts, '' The Science of Life'' (1930)—written with his son G. P. Wells and evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley, and '' The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind'' (1931). The "Outlines" became sufficiently common for James Thurber to parody the trend in his humorous essay, "An Outline of Scientists"—indeed, Wells's ''Outline of History'' remains in print with a new 2005 edition, while ''A Short History of the World'' has been re-edited (2006).

From quite early in Wells's career, he sought a better way to organise society and wrote a number of Utopian novels. The first of these was ''A Modern Utopia'' (1905), which shows a worldwide utopia with "no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all"; two travellers from our world fall into its alternate history. The others usually begin with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better way of living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to behave rationally and abandoning a European war ('' In the Days of the Comet'' (1906)), or a world council of scientists taking over, as in ''The Shape of Things to Come'' (1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who''. In this story, Herbert, an enthusiastic temporary companion to the Doctor, is revealed to be a young H. G. Wells. The plot is loosely based upon the themes and characters of ''The Time Machine'' with references to ''The War of the Worlds'', ''The Invisible Man'' and '' The Island of Doctor Moreau''. The story jokingly suggests that Wells's inspiration for his later novels came from his adventure with the Sixth Doctor.
* In the BBC2 anthology series ''Encounters'' about imagined meetings between historical figures, ''Beautiful Lies'', by Paul Pender (15 August 1992) centred on an acrimonious dinner party attended by Wells (Richard Todd), George Orwell (Jon Finch), and William Empson (Patrick Ryecart).
* The character of Wells also appeared in several episodes of '' Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman'' (1993–1997), usually pitted against the time-travelling villain known as Tempus (Lane Davies). Wells's younger self was played by Terry Kiser, and the older Wells was played by Hamilton Camp.
* In the British TV mini-series ''The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells'' (2001), several of Wells's short stories are dramatised but are adapted using Wells himself (Tom Ward) as the main protagonist in each story.
* In the Disney Channel Original Series ''Phil of the Future'', which centres on time-travel, the present-day high school that the main characters attend is named "H. G. Wells".
* In the 2006 television docudrama '' H. G. Wells: War with the World'', Wells is played by Michael Sheen.
* Television episode "World's End" of Cold Case (2007) is about how the discovery of human remains in the bottom of a well leads to the reinvestigation of the case of a housewife who went missing during Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds".
* On the science fiction television series ''Warehouse 13'' (2009–2014), there is a female version Helena G. Wells. When she appeared she explained that her brother was her front for her writing because a female science fiction author would not be accepted.
* Comedian Paul F. Tompkins portrays a fictional Wells as the host of ''The Dead Authors Podcast'', wherein Wells uses his time machine to bring dead authors (played by other comedians) to the present and interview them.
* H. G. Wells as a young boy appears in the ''Legends of Tomorrow'' episode "The Magnificent Eight". In this story, the boy Wells is dying of consumption but is cured by a time-travelling Martin Stein.
* In the four part series '' The Nightmare Worlds of H. G. Wells'' (2016), Wells is played by Ray Winstone.
* In the 2017 television series version of '' Time After Time'', based on the 1979 film, H. G. Wells is portrayed by Freddie Stroma.
* In the 2019 television adaptation of ''The War of the Worlds'', the character of 'George', played by Rafe Spall, demonstrates a number of elements of Wells's own life, including his estrangement from his wife and unmarried co-habitation with the character of 'Amy'.
* Wells is played by Nick Cave in the 2021 film ''The Electrical Life of Louis Wain''.

Film adaptations

The novels and short stories of H. G. Wells have been adapted for cinema. These include '' Island of Lost Souls'' (1932), ''The Invisible Man'' (1933), '' Things to Come'' (1936), ''The Man Who Could Work Miracles'' (1937), ''The War of the Worlds'' (1953), ''The Time Machine'' (1960), ''First Men in the Moon'' (1964), '' The Island of Dr. Moreau'' (1996), ''The Time Machine'' (2002) and ''War of the Worlds'' (2005).

Literary papers

In 1954, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign purchased the H. G. Wells literary papers and correspondence collection."H. G. Wells papers, 1845–1946 , University of Illinois Rare Book & Manuscript Library"
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The university's Rare Book & Manuscript Library holds the largest collection of Wells manuscripts, correspondence, first editions and publications in the United States."H. G. Wells Correspondence"
Library Illinois. Among these is unpublished material and the manuscripts of such works as ''The War of the Worlds'' and ''The Time Machine''. The collection includes first editions, revisions and translations. The letters contain general family correspondence, communications from publishers, material regarding the Fabian Society, and letters from politicians and public figures, most notably George Bernard Shaw and Joseph Conrad.

Bibliography

See also

* ''''

References

Further reading

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* Cole, Sarah. ''Inventing Tomorrow: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth Century.''New York, Columbia University Press, 2021
* Dickson, Lovat. ''H. G. Wells: His Turbulent Life & Times''. 1969.
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* Foot, Michael. ''H. G.: History of Mr. Wells''. Doubleday, 1985 (), Black Swan, New edition, Oct 1996 (paperback, )
* Gilmour, David. ''The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002 (paperback, ); 2003 (paperback, ).
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* Gomme, A. W., ''Mr. Wells as Historian''. Glasgow: MacLehose, Jackson, and Co., 1921.
* Gosling, John. ''Waging the War of the Worlds''. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 2009 (paperback, ).
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* Jasanoff, Maya, "The Future Was His" (review of Sarah Cole, ''Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and the Twentieth Century'', Columbia University Press, 374 pp.), ''The New York Review of Books'', vol. LXVII, no. 12 (23 July 2020), pp. 50–51. Writes Jasanoff (p. 51): "Although ellswas prophetically right, and right-minded, about some things... where was he more disturbingly wrong than in his loathsome affinity for eugenics..."
* Lynn, Andrea ''The secret love life of H.G. Wells''
* Mackenzie, Norman and Jean, ''The Time Traveller: the Life of H G Wells'', London: Weidenfeld, 1973,
* Mauthner, Martin. ''German Writers in French Exile, 1933–1940'', London: Vallentine and Mitchell, 2007, .
* McLean, Steven. 'The Early Fiction of H. G. Wells: Fantasies of Science'. Palgrave, 2009, .
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* Partington, John S. ''Building Cosmopolis: The Political Thought of H. G. Wells''. Ashgate, 2003, .
*Roberts, Adam. ''H G Wells A Literary Life.'' Springer International Publishing, 2019, ISBN 978-3-03-026421-5.
* Roukema, Aren. 2021. “The Esoteric Roots of Science Fiction: Edward Bulwer-Lytton, H.G. Wells, and the Occlusion of Magic.” ''Science Fiction Studies'' 48 (2): 218–42.
* Shadurski, Maxim. ''The Nationality of Utopia: H. G. Wells, England, and the World State''. London: Routledge, 2020, .
* Sherborne, Michael. ''H. G. Wells: Another Kind of Life''. London: Peter Owen, 2010, .
* Smith, David C., ''H. G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986,
* West, Anthony. ''H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life''. London: Hutchinson, 1984.

External links

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''Future Tense – The Story of H. G. Wells''
at BBC One – 150th anniversary documentary (2016)

"In the footsteps of H G Wells"
at ''New Statesman'' – "The great author called for a Human Rights Act; 60 years later, we have it" (2000)

Sources—collections

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Free H. G. Wells downloads for iPhone, iPad, Nook, Android, and Kindle in PDF and all popular eBook reader formats (AZW3, EPUB, MOBI)
at ebooktakeaway.com

H G Wells
at the British Library

H. G. Wells papers
at University of Illinois

Ebooks by H. G. Wells
at Global Grey Ebooks
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Sources—letters, essays and interviews

Archive of Wells's BBC broadcasts

Film interview with H. G. Wells


"Stephen Crane. From an English Standpoint"
by Wells, 1900.


Rabindranath Tagore and Wells conversing in Geneva in 1930.

"Introduction"
to W. N. P. Barbellion's ''The Journal of a Disappointed Man'', by Wells, 1919.


by Wells, 1895.


to M. P. Shiel, by Wells, 1937.

Biography

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"H. G. Wells"
In ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Online.
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Critical essays

An introduction to ''The War of the Worlds'' by Iain Sinclair
on the British Library's Discovering Literature website.

"An Appreciation of H. G. Wells"
by Mary Austin, 1911.
* "Socialism and the Family" (1906) by Belfort Bax
Part 1



by Niall Ferguson, in ''The Telegraph'', 24 June 2005.

"H. G. Wells's Idea of a World Brain: A Critical Re-assessment"
by W. Boyd Rayward, in ''Journal of the American Society for Information Science'' 50 (15 May 1999): 557–579


by G. K. Chesterton, from his book ''Heretics'' (1908).

"The Internet: a world brain?"
by Martin Gardner, in ''Skeptical Inquirer'', Jan–Feb 1999.

"Science Fiction: The Shape of Things to Come"
by Mark Bould, in ''The Socialist Review'', May 2005.

"Who needs Utopia? A dialogue with my utopian self (with apologies, and thanks, to H. G. Wells)"
by Gregory Claeys in ''Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal'', no 1, Spring 2006.

"When H. G. Wells Split the Atom: A 1914 Preview of 1945"
by Freda Kirchwey, in ''The Nation'', posted 4 September 2003 (original 18 August 1945 issue).

"Wells, Hitler and the World State"
by George Orwell. First published: ''Horizon''. GB, London. Aug 1941.

"War of the Worldviews"
by John J. Miller, in ''The Wall Street Journal'' Opinion Journal, 21 June 2005.

"Wells's Autobiography"
by John Hart, from ''New International'', Vol.2 No.2, Mar 1935, pp. 75–76.

"History in the Science Fiction of H. G. Wells"
by Patrick Parrinder, ''Cycnos'', 22.2 (2006).

"From the World Brain to the Worldwide Web"
by Martin Campbell-Kelly, Gresham College Lecture, 9 November 2006.

"The Beginning of Wisdom: On Reading H. G. Wells"
by Vivian Gornick, ''Boston Review'', 31.1 (2007).

John Hammond, The Complete List of Short Stories of H. G. Wells


at ''National Geographic''

"H. G. Wells, the man I knew"
Obituary of Wells by George Bernard Shaw, at the ''New Statesman''
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wells, H. G.

1866 births
1946 deaths
19th-century atheists
19th-century British non-fiction writers
19th-century British novelists
19th-century British short story writers
19th-century educational theorists
19th-century English non-fiction writers
19th-century English novelists
19th-century essayists
19th-century social scientists
20th-century atheists
20th-century biographers
20th-century British historians
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Alumni of Imperial College London
Alumni of the University of London
Alumni of University of London Worldwide
Anthropology writers
Anti-capitalists
Anti-monarchists
Atheist philosophers
British alternative history writers
British anti-communists
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British atheists
British autobiographers
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British educational theorists
British fantasy writers
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British magazine founders
British male essayists
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British philosophers
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British science fiction writers
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Civil servants in the Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)
Critics of religions
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Cultural critics
Cycling writers
English anti-fascists
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English autobiographers
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English fantasy writers
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English male non-fiction writers
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English science fiction writers
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English social commentators
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Futurologists
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History of literature
Human evolution theorists
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Lecturers
Literacy and society theorists
Literary theorists
London School of Economics
Magic realism writers
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Members of the Fabian Society
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Metaphysics writers
Military science fiction writers
Pamphleteers
Presidents of the English Centre of PEN
People associated with the University of London
People educated at Midhurst Grammar School
People from Bromley
People from Sandgate, Kent
People of the Victorian era
People with diabetes
Philosophers of culture
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Philosophy writers
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Progressivism in the United Kingdom
Psychological fiction writers
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Science activists
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Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductees
Social critics
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Surrealist writers
Textbook writers
Theorists on Western civilization
Victorian novelists
Weird fiction writers
H. G.
Writers about activism and social change
Writers about communism
Writers about globalization
Writers about religion and science
Writers about the Soviet Union
Writers of fiction set in prehistoric times
Writers of Gothic fiction
Writers of time travel romance
Writers who illustrated their own writing
Writers with disabilities