(1866-1946) UK journalist, social critic and author, the most important of all nineteenth-century sf writers in the UK and in America as well, where his early work beginning with The Time Machine (1895) was widely published in contemporary editions. These novels and stories were particularly important in the evolution of Genre SF in America, through the purchase in the 1920s of several tales by Hugo Gernsback for republication in Amazing and elsewhere, where they were promoted as models for what would soon be called science fiction (a term Wells did not apply to his own work). Throughout his UK career, until at least 1940, he remained central to the evolution of the Scientific Romance, his influence on J D Beresford, S Fowler Wright, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C Clarke and later authors being unmistakable. Within the genre as it developed, Wells was frequently described, beside or instead of Jules Verne, as the Father of Science Fiction. Neither author accepted the accolade (for details of this, and of their relationship, see entry on Verne).
To the world at large, in any case, Wells soon became as famous for nonfantastic novels like Tono-Bungay (1909) or Ann Veronica (1909) (see below for discussion) or The History of Mr Polly (1910), and for his nonfiction – amounting to nearly 2000 pieces in periodicals between 1886 and 1946, plus dozens of books, much of this output consisting of descriptions of the rational world order he thought history made indispensable. For the latter in particular, he gained world-wide fame; after considerable journalism, his first book-length efforts in Futures Studies, like Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Human Progress upon Human Life and Thought (coll of linked essays April-December 1901 Fortnightly Review; dated 1902 but 1901) and Mankind in the Making (coll of linked essays: early version September 1902-September 1903 Fortnightly Review; rev 1903) became enormously influential in the decade before the world-shattering debacle of World War One, from which he emerged as a sexagenarian never again fully in touch with the Zeitgeist: much of his later work, decreasingly in tune with the bruised, aftermath temper of the era, comprised huger and huger attempts – like The Science of Life (1930) with Julian Huxley and G P Wells or, lightly fictionalized, The Shape of Things to Come (1933) – to synthesize the enormous range of his reasoning about the world and about its necessary future. This later work, though widely respected, was often treated as having been obsoleted by the augurs of World War Two to come. This may now seem unfair.
At the time of Wells's birth his father was a shopkeeper – having earlier been a gardener and cricketer – but the business failed and Wells's mother was forced to go back into domestic service as a housekeeper. Her desire to consolidate the family's social status resulted in "Bertie" being apprenticed to a draper, like his brothers before him, but in 1883 he become a teacher/pupil at Midhurst Grammar School. He obtained a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London and studied biology there under T H Huxley (1825-1895), a vociferous proponent of Darwin's theory of Evolution and an outspoken scientific humanist, who made a deep impression on him. As early as 1896 – in "Human Evolution, An Artificial Process" (October 1896 Fortnightly Review) – he repudiated Social Darwinism, which had been espoused by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), though his early interest in Eugenics obscured for some that early repudiation, and made it unfortunately easy to justify the hierarchical social structures and culture heroes (see Superman) conspicuous in some of his earlier Utopian works, like A Modern Utopia (1905).
After taking his degree externally, Wells wrote two textbooks, Text-Book of Biology (dated 1893 but 1892 2vols), and Honours Physiography (dated 1893 but 1892) with R A Gregory, while working for the University Correspondence College. He had already begun to publish scientific journalism, including the essay "The Rediscovery of the Unique" (July 1891 Fortnightly Review) and was selling articles and short stories in large numbers by 1893. The most ambitious and important of his early articles was "The Man of the Year Million" (6 November 1893 Pall Mall Gazette), which boldly describes the titular man as Wells thought natural selection would ultimately reshape him: a creature with a huge head and eyes, delicate hands and a much reduced body, permanently immersed in nutrient fluids almost like a Brain in a Box, having been forced to retreat Underground after the cooling of the Sun. Other articles include "The Advent of the Flying Man" (8 December 1893 Pall Mall Gazette); and "The Extinction of Man" (25 September 1894 Pall Mall Gazette). Wells's authorship of two unsigned reviews of interest has not yet been fully established; they are "An Excursion to the Sun" (6 January 1894 Pall Mall Gazette), a poetic cosmic vision of solar storms and electromagnetic tides couched as a book review, and "The Living Things that May Be" (12 June 1894 Pall Mall Gazette), which discusses the possibility of silicon-based life. A good deal of this speculative nonfiction, including the two unsigned reviews here cited, is reprinted in H.G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction (coll 1975) edited by Robert M Philmus and David Y Hughes; it is, in general, more relaxed, more intellectually joyous, than much of his later work.
While still attending classes, Wells had also begun to publish fiction, beginning with the lightly fictionalized sermon, "A Talk with Gryllotalpa" (February 1887 The Science Schools Journal) as by Septimus Browne. His early professionally published short stories tended to be less adventurous than his nonfiction, mostly featuring encounters between men and strange lifeforms, as in "The Stolen Bacillus" (21 June 1894 Pall Mall Budget), "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid" (2 August 1894 Pall Mall Budget; vt "The Strange Orchid" in Thirty Strange Stories, coll 1897), "In the Avu Observatory" (9 August 1894 Pall Mall Budget) and "Æpyornis Island" (13 December 1894 Pall Mall Budget) (see Islands). Though they would never have the transforming effect of his novels, his short work did soon grow bolder in conception, as exemplified by the visionary fantasy "Under the Knife" (January 1896 The New Review as "Slip Under the Knife"; vt in The Plattner Story and Others, coll 1897), the cosmic-Disaster story "The Star" (December 1897 The Graphic). "A Story of the Stone Age" (May-November 1897 The Idler) is a notable attempt to imagine the circumstances which allowed Man to evolve from bestial ancestors (see Prehistoric SF).and the cautionary parable "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" (June 1898 Illustrated London News), later filmed (see below). The novella A Story of the Days to Come (June-October 1899 Pall Mall Magazine, part one as "A Cure for Love: Anno Domini, 1996: A Story of the Days to Come", each of the five instalments being separately titled; 1976) is an elaborate study of future society, imagining a technologically developed world where poverty and misery are needlessly maintained by class divisions, and the countryside, empty of human culture, is dominated by the authoritarian Food Company (see also Food Pills); it is one of Wells's relatively rare tales set in a conspicuously altered future.
Later stories include three of his most famous: "The Land Ironclads" (December 1903 Strand), in which he anticipates the devastating effect of tanks, the story first being published in book form as a contribution to The Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Gift Book (anth 1915) edited by George Goodchild; The Country of the Blind (April 1904 Strand; 1915 chap; exp of original story plus 1939 reworking, vt as coll The Country of the Blind 1939 1939 chap), whose 1939 revision is exceptionally bleak; and "The Door in the Wall" (7 July 1906 Daily Chronicle), a tale of the longing to escape the muddle of the world. Even later, "The Lost Last Trump" (July 1915 Century Magazine), assembled, vt "The Story of the Last Trump", in Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and the Last Trump: Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times (coll of linked stories and essays 1915) as by Reginald Bliss, is of interest, perhaps mainly for its premonitory (though jokingly expressed) pessimism, as the accidentally blowing of the last trump is essentially ignored by humanity, which no longer cares about the Kingdom of Heaven. In the extremely late Prehistoric SF story/essay "The Grisly Folk and their War With Men" (12 March 1921 The Saturday Evening Post), the grisly folk are Neanderthals. Wells wrote no more short fiction of any interest.
Most of Wells's short stories were initially reprinted in five collections: The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (coll 1895), The Plattner Story and Others (coll 1897), Tales of Space and Time (coll dated 1900 but 1899), Twelve Stories and a Dream (coll 1903) and The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories (coll 1911). The contents of these were reprinted, along with three tales from Thirty Strange Stories (coll 1897), in The Short Stories of H.G. Wells (coll 1927; vt The Famous Short Stories of H.G. Wells 1938; vt The Complete Short Stories of H.G. Wells 1965). The short stories not included in this omnibus were reprinted in The Man with a Nose and Other Uncollected Short Stories (coll 1984) along with the script for an unmade film, and are included in The Complete Stories of H G Wells (coll 1998).
There is one significant exception to Wells's seeming lack of ambition in his early stories: "The Chronic Argonauts" (April-June 1888 The Science Schools Journal), an incomplete serial that soon went through several significantly different iterations of the basic idea, including a related series of essays – "Time Travelling: Possibility or Paradox?" (17 March 1894 National Observer), "The Time Machine" (24 March 1894 National Observer), "A.D. 12,203: A Glimpse of the Future" (31 April 1894 National Observer), "The Refinement of Humanity: A.D. 12,203" (21 April 1894 National Observer), "The Sunset of Mankind" (28 March 1894 National Observer), "In the Underworld" (19 May 1894 National Observer) and "The Time Traveller Returns" (23 June 1894 National Observer). After further revisions, this narrative ultimately became The Time Machine: An Invention (January-May 1895 The New Review; rev 1895; further rev 1895), Wells's first major work of fiction, and still his most famous, with the possible exception of The War of the Worlds (1898) (see below). It is the first fully-imagined tale of Time Travel, and remains the default version.
Like Joseph Conrad's similarly ominous Heart of Darkness (February-April 1899 Blackwood's Magazine as "The Heart of Darkness"; 1925), The Time Machine is told as a Club Story, and dramatically prefigures the profound anxieties and dislocations about to afflict the Western World (see Decadence; Horror in SF; Imperialism; World War One). Unlike Conrad's novella, The Time Machine is pure sf, or rather pure Scientific Romance, though each tale inescapably conveys a profound unease about the future. The protagonist, who tells his story to a group of friends, has invented a Time Machine which allows him to travel both forward and backward in time. Told in a style more evocative than the polished but stripped-down idiom Wells would soon establish, his narrative foretells without evasions the Evolution of Homo sapiens as seen through a sequence of exemplary moments. The first lesson is the most famous. After the traveller has come to an initial halt 802,701 years hence, he discovers that humanity has divided into two species: the gentle Eloi, who inhabit an apparent Eden above the ground (based for Satirical reasons on the middle-class London suburb of Bedford Park); and the bestial Morlocks who labour Underground, in a powerful rendering of the implications of Social Darwinism that can be understood as a harsh corrective to the effortlessly Edenic Utopia promulgated in William Morris's Lamarckian News from Nowhere (1890), a text he knew well. The Time Traveller eventually escapes this era, only to find, at last, 30,000,000 years hence, in the distant Far Future, that higher forms of life have perished, and that the Sun has cooled to a ghastly giant red orb hovering unmoving over the dead world: for the planet has ceased to rotate. It is the End of the World.
Wells's next novel is a throwback, The Wonderful Visit (1895), in which an angel displaced from the Land of Dreams casts a mildly critical eye upon late-Victorian mores and folkways. He followed this, however, with three novels that have remained famous, beginning with the radically more powerful The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896; vt [with textual omissions] The Island of Dr Moreau: A Possibility 1896); the novel incorporates ideas from an essay, "The Limits of Individual Plasticity" (19 January 1895 Saturday Review), into the story of a hubristic Scientist populating a remote Island with a Zoo of beasts which have been surgically reshaped as men and whose veneer of civilization – exemplified by their "Big Thinks" and chanted "Laws" – proves thin (see Apes as Human). The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance (12 June-7 August 1897 Pearson's Weekly; 1897) is a second classic study of scientific hubris brought to destruction, in this case through his criminal misuse of the Invention of a device that gives him the power of Invisibility. In the third of these famous tales, The War of the Worlds (April-December 1897 Pearson's Weekly; 1898; with epilogue cut 1898), Wells introduced Aliens from Mars in a role which had not yet become a Cliché: as monstrous invaders of Earth (see Invasion), competitors in a cosmic struggle for existence (see War of the Worlds for radio, film and television versions); it is clear throughout that Western Imperialism is being anatomized, with the Martians being equated with white Europeans, and white Europeans with Breeds Without the Law. The Martian tripod fighting machines later shaped the Japanese Anime tradition of Mecha.
Marginally less grippingly told than the previous novels, When the Sleeper Wakes (7 January 1899-6 May 1899 The Graphic: 1899; rev vt The Sleeper Awakes 1910) is prophetic not only of the future in general, but of Wells's own shift away from intensely imagined fiction whose lessons (if any) well up as though unbidden from context; it is a robust romance of socialist revolution, whose hero awakes 400 years hence from Suspended Animation (see Sleeper Awakes) to play a quasi-messianic (see Messiahs) role in the Utopia/Dystopia to which he has fallen heir, a cityscape characterized by a metaphorical and political distinction between the upper reaches, where the elite lives, and the Underground, where the exploited masses sleep. Until the very different Men Like Gods (November 1922-June 1923 Hearst's International; 1923) and The Shape of Things to Come (1933), it is only here and in The Time Machine that Wells moves much beyond the very Near Future. In The First Men in the Moon (November 1900-April 1901 Cosmopolitan; 1901), the last of what are generally thought of as his greatest Scientific Romances, he carried forward the great tradition of Fantastic Voyages to the Moon – via a Spaceship using the Antigravity metal Cavorite (see Elements) – and described the hyperorganized Dystopian society of the Selenites, who have suffered a process of Evolution that has swelled their brains and atrophied the rest. After this great tale the lessons began.
In The Food of the Gods, and How it Came to Earth (December 1903-June 1904 Pearson's Magazine; 1904) a new race of giant Supermen is produced by the super-nutrient Herakleophorbia which nudzhingly enlarges both body and mind (see Great and Small); at the climax of the tale, forty-foot tall giants, oppressed by the little people, declare a state of war, with the future at stake. In the Days of the Comet (19 February-28 March 1906 Daily Chronicle; 1906) describes the wondrous change in human personality brought about by the gases in a Comet's tail, which arrives in the nick of time, with Germany's Invasion of England threatening to succeed; cleansed of muddle and sexual jealousy, the protagonists (and everyone else) begin to tear down the old England and build a sane sanitary Utopia. In both these works, didactic imperatives tended to trump novelistic pleasures, in a narrative voice not free from impatience. From a relatively early point, reviewers and critics were beginning to define these seven or eight early titles as exemplary instances of the Scientific Romance, and Wells spoke of them as such in early interviews, perhaps reluctantly. Though he later described them, along with tales like the uneasy Mysterious Stranger fantasy The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine (July-December 1901 Pearson's Magazine; 1902), as "fantastic and imaginative romances", he excluded the latter title from as The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells (omni 1933; cut vt Seven Famous Novels 1934). Also excluded were two further titles published before World War One. In The War in the Air, and Particularly How Mr Bert Smallways Fared while it Lasted (January-December 1908 Pall Mall Magazine; 1908) Wells envisages a Future War with colossal destruction wrought – particularly on New York – by aerial bombing, leaving in the end some hope for a Pax Aeronautica to follow. In The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind (December 1913-May 1914 English Review; 1914) similar destruction is wrought in the world war of 1958, through the development of Nuclear Energy, by atomic bombs whose "chain reactions" cause them to explode repeatedly; the end-story extensively describes the World State that has developed, more or less inevitably, from the near-death of civilization, a progress frequently assumed in Wells's later fiction and nonfiction.
In the meantime, while he was writing his great romances, Wells also began to publish realistic novels that drew heavily upon his own experiences to deal with the pretensions and predicaments of the aspiring lower-middle class. The Wheels of Chance A Holiday Adventure (9 May-19 September 1896 To-day; 1896; vt The Wings of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll 1896) is light comedy in a vein carried forward and deepened in much more powerful (and successful) tales like Love and Mr Lewisham: The Story of a Very Young Couple (10 November 1899-9 February 1900 Times Weekly Edition; 1899; vt Love and Mr Lewisham 1900), Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul (January-December 1905 Pall Mall Magazine; 1905) and The History of Mr Polly (October 1909-March 1910 State Magazine; 1910). But these tales lacked the cognitive seriousness Wells thought necessary to make his name as a serious novelist. He became an ardent champion of the novel of ideas versus the novel of character, in which it would be possible to articulate large themes and to attack issues of contemporary social concern. His most successful effort along these lines was probably Tono-Bungay (September 1908-January 1909 Popular Magazine; 1909), a sustained and engaging state-of-the-nation tale about the rise and fall of a business empire based on the titular quack remedy; an attempt to rescue this empire by importing a quasi-magical new Element called quap founders; as the novel ends, a destroyer designed by the protagonist steams down the Thames into the heart of darkness of the night-shrouded North Sea. Ann Veronica:A Modern Love Story (1909) is a roman à cle polemic on the situation of women in society (see Feminism); the political novel, The New Machiavelli (May-October 1910 English Review; 1910), which was savagely guyed by Ford Madox Ford in The New Humpty-Dumpty (1912), initiated a succession of what became known as Prig Novels, the longest and most unrelenting of these mouthpiece narratives being The World of William Clissold: A Novel at a New Angle (1926 3vols), where chapter-long Infodumps, designed to present Wells's well-argued economic and political convictions, mock any pretext to storytelling; except for The New Machiavelli, they have weathered ill.
From the beginning of his career (see above), Wells had directed much of his extraordinary energy to nonfiction, becoming a founder of Futures Studies with titles like Anticipations (cited above in full). The most important of this early work is probably A Modern Utopia (October 1904-April 1905 Fortnightly Review; 1905), a quasi-novel whose discursive protagonists, translated mysteriously to a Utopian planet, which they describe while experiencing. It is a world whose wholesome sanity and dynamic solutions to the universal problems are enabled in part by the fact that in the Alternate History suggested in this text Rome did not collapse into a Dark Age; a ruling Samurai class (perhaps distastefully to twenty-first century readers) runs the world, whose population flourishes on Eugenic principles, though everything the protagonists see is presented on a basis incorporating the need and likelihood of endless change. This text was followed by the entirely nonfictional First & Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life (1908); and others. Wells's futurological essays had early brought him to the attention of Sidney Webb (1859-1947) and Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), and he joined the Fabian Society in 1903. His subsequent career as a social crusader went through many phases. He tried to assume command of the Fabian Society in 1906, but failed and withdrew in 1908. In none of this work did he, any more than his contemporaries, rightly anticipate the disaster of World War One, whose horrors he did not anticipate in Little Wars [for subtitle see Checklist] (graph 1913), the first commercially published Wargame; or in his first utopian response to the holocaust, The War That Will End War (1914), a title which soon became too famous to forget; or in what remained for some time his most famous novel, Mr Britling Sees it Through (20 May-21 October 1916 The Nation; 1916), where he dramatized what continued (until around this point) to seem to him the perfectly rational conviction that the Western world was going through a learning experience, (see Optimism and Pessimism).
In the immediate aftermath of the War, Wells continued to argue, nevertheless, that out of this conflict would come a sane solution to humanity's problems, as sought to demonstrate in his hugely ambitious and popular The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (1919-1920 24 parts; 1920 2vols; many subsequent revisions), where he presented a defiantly Whig interpretation of history in which the War opened the way to a better future. Another vast presentation of this case, The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931 2vols), directly prefigured last and most comprehensive of his exercises in Future History, The Shape of Things to Come (portions only 25 June-11 September 1933 Sunday Express; 1933). The text of The Shape of Things to Come is presented as a late twenty-second century history of the world, whose transmission back to 1933 Wells explains through a direct reference to J W Dunne's time theories. This history (presciently) describes a World War Two which begins in 1940 between Germany and Poland. After interminable conflicts, the West declines, leading to a savage interregnum, a period during which, minus the framing device and much argument, Wells's filmscript Things to Come (27 September-25 October 1935 This Week; 1935) is set; the film itself, Things to Come (1936) directed by William Cameron Menzies, is faithful to the book, and climaxes in Art Deco scenes spectacularly announcing the rise of an Air Dictatorship. This Pax Aeronautica devolves pacifically into a World State, during which epoch the rich chaos of London is transformed gloatingly into serried ranks of Garden Cities, rather like the Eloi suburbs satirized by Wells forty years earlier. Finally, after the World State declares itself no longer needed by a fully mature human race, the true inevitable Utopia is born. During these years Wells visited many countries, addressing the Petrograd Soviet, the Sorbonne and the Reichstag. In 1934 he had discussions with both Stalin and Roosevelt, trying to recruit them to his conviction that the world could be saved. He was one of the two or three most widely known men in the world.
Wells's own growing inner post-War disillusion – which for decades he tended to deny in his nonfiction – became increasingly overt in a tale like The Undying Fire (29 March-10 May 1919 New Republic; 1919), a fantasy which directly re-enacts the Book of Job in contemporary England; God again accepts Satan's wager, allowing Job Huss to suffer every kind of misfortune, including a series of conversations with friends and thinkers who lack the necessary defiant wisdom to transcend the old God and to understand the world in terms of Creative Evolution (see George Bernard Shaw). His next novel of interest, Men Like Gods (November 1922-June 1923 Hearst's International; 1923), which is a kind of dramatized continuation of the themes of A Modern Utopia, transfers a group of Earthlings, via something like Matter Transmission, to the planet Utopia, which despite its high Technology they attempt to conquer (see Imperialism), though the protagonist demurs, and is allowed to remain for a while. Wells included the tale in The Scientific Romances of H.G. Wells (see above), though the American publishers left it out, perhaps unwisely, as Men Like Gods more than once eloquently escapes its didactic remit, certainly in the moving passage where a Utopian explains the origins of his world:
The jewel on the reptile's head that had brought Utopia out of the confusions of human life, was curiosity, the play impulse, prolonged and expanded in adult life into an insatiable appetite for knowledge and an habitual creative urgency. All Utopians had become as little children, learners and makers.
The Dream (October 1923-May 1924 Nash's and Pall Mall Magazine; 1924) reverses without much joy the structure of its predecessor, and is very much less telling than Wells's next three romances, where the pieties of prognostication are framed as more or less delusional. The eponymous "Sargon" in Christina Alberta's Father (21 February-23 May 1925 Collier's as "Sargon, King of Kings"; 1925) is a touchingly vulnerable self-portrait of a prophet without honour (or deserving same); Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (1928), a culpably naive businessman is shipwrecked, and is saved by the superstitious Yahoo-like inhabitants of the eponymous Island, whom he tries to convert to the ways of common sense; but Blettsworthy cannot prevail against their cruel and stupid tribal customs, discovering in the end that he has been delirious, and that the Rampole Island generated by his afflicted Perception of reality is Manhattan (see New York). the foolish thinker of inflated thoughts featured in The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) becomes possessed by a "master spirit" which drives him to seek charismatic political power as "Lord Paramount"; the cover illustration by David Low (1891-1963) shows him dealing regally with an unmistakable Mussolini. Filmscripts during this period include two – for The King who Was a King (1929), and "The New Faust" (December 1936 Nash's Pall Mall Magazine) – that never reached the screen. But as well as Things to Come (see above), Man Who Could Work Miracles [for title details see Checklist below] (January 1936 Nash's and Pall Mall Magazine; 1936 chap) was filmed as The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936) directed by Alexander Korda and Lothar Mendes. Both were assembled as Two Film Stories: Things to Come; Man Who Could Work Miracles (omni 1940).
The last romances were various. In The Croquet Player: A Story (25 November-1 December 1936 Evening Standard; 1936 chap) a village is haunted by the brutal spectres of Man's evolutionary heritage (see Apes as Human), but the allegory is lost on the socialite of the book's title. In The Camford Visitation (1937 chap) the routines of a university are upset by the interventions of a mocking disembodied Mysterious Stranger voice. In the gentler Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia (1937) cosmic Rays emanating from Mars may or may not be causing Mutations in the human spirit comparable to but subtler than those wrought by the miraculous Comet of In the Days of the Comet. The Brothers (9 January-13 February 1938 Sunday Referee; 1938) clearly depicts, though it is set in an imaginary country, the Spanish civil war. The Holy Terror (1939) is a painstaking but uneasy study of the psychological development of a modern dictator based on the careers of Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, beginning in the early twentieth century and moving into the Near Future where, after a devastating war, the protagonist becomes ruler of a World State, but only – perhaps inevitably – to become a tyrant. In All Aboard for Ararat (1940), which is a pendant to The Undying Fire (see above), God asks a new Noah to build a second Ark, which is agreeable to Noah, provided that this time God will be content to remain a passenger while Man takes charge of his own destiny (see Ship of Fools). Babes in the Darkling Wood (1940) and You Can't Be Too Careful: A Sample of Life 1901-1951 (1941) are dithery Prig Novels set in vague Near Future venues, where the protagonists are taught lessons.
The later nonfiction – typical titles including The Fate of Homo Sapiens: An Unemotional Statement of the Things That Are Happening to Him Now, and of the Immediate Possibilities Confronting Him (1939), The New World Order: Whether it is Attainable, How it can be Attained, and What Sort of a World at Peace Will Have To Be (1940) and Phoenix: A Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Reorganization (1942) – repeats with reluctant despair the clarion calls to the World State that Wells had been uttering for decades. And in his last work of nonfiction, Mind at the End of its Tether (1945 chap), he allowed into the open the disillusion that had become apparent in his increasingly disregarded fiction, particularly The Holy Terror, making it clear his conviction that mankind may be doomed because people cannot and will not adapt themselves to a sustainable way of life. In retrospect, books like this, and some of that later fiction, allow readers now to come to better terms with the public H G Wells who is now essentially unread. The late work also works in consort with his remarkable though quirky Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) (first version 17 September 1934-6 November 1934 Daily Herald; 1934 2vols), though even this memoir defaulted frequently to passages of abstract prognostication; its continuation, H.G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography (1984) – not published during his lifetime because of its sexual content, and because it mentioned living persons – did something to round out the picture.
That picture is of a colossus who could create unforgettable imagined worlds that remain alive today, but who could posthumously persuade the world that he may have been right about the future. Though the World State remains a dream, the need for it is more urgent now than when the United Nations was created in 1945 according to precepts – eventually articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted 10 December 1948 by the General Assembly – that Wells had advocated for decades, in books like The Rights of Man; Or, What Are We Fighting For? (1940). Towards the end of his life Wells himself understandably allowed his darker instincts about the future full play, as in Mind at the End of its Tether, but his passion for the betterment of the human species has lost none of its relevance in the troubled decades since his death.
Further films based on Wells's work include Island of Lost Souls (1932) based on The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Invisible Man (1933); The War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005); Terror is a Man (1959; vt Blood Creature), based without credit on The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Time Machine (1960 and 2002); The First Men in the Moon (1964); The Island of Dr Moreau (1977 and 1996); and, very loosely, Food of the Gods (1976). Notable Recursive SF in which Wells is a character includes The Space Machine (1976) by Christopher Priest, Time After Time (1976) by Karl Alexander (filmed as Time After Time [1979]), and "The Inheritors of Earth" (in The Time-Lapsed Man, coll 1990) by Eric Brown.
Wells was posthumously inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1997. [JC/BS]
see also: Anthropology; Anti-Intellectualism in SF; Automation; Biology; Cities; Colonization of Other Worlds; Comics; Computer Wargame; Cosmology; Critical and Historical Works About SF; Death Rays; Devolution; Dime-Novel SF; Dimensions; Economics; Edisonade; Entropy; ESP; Fermi Paradox; France; Genetic Engineering; Heroes; History of SF; Hive Minds; Humour; Icons; Identity Exchange; Imaginary Science; Life on Other Worlds; Machines; Mainstream Writers of SF; Mathematics; Medicine; Money; Monsters; Music; Mutants; The Night that Panicked America; Origin of Man; Physics; Politics; Pollution; Power Sources; Proto SF; Pulp; Radio; Religion; Rockets; Russia; SF Music; Scientific Errors; Sex; Sociology; Theatre; Transportation; Weapons.
Herbert George Wells
born Bromley, Kent: 21 September 1866
died London: 13 August 1946
works
scientific romances and others
New and definitive editions of the most famous scientific romances were in active preparation from various houses before revision of international copyright conventions extended the period of protection beyond fifty years after the author's death; see below for such editions which have appeared. Wells revised many of his works for the Atlantic edition of The Works of H.G. Wells (New York: Macmillan Company, 1924-1927) [published in twenty-six volumes]; as none of these revisions proved of major interest, and most of the contents fall outside the remit of this entry, we do not list individual volumes below.
- The Time Machine: An Invention (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1895) [see discussion in entry above for earlier iterations of the subject matter: a later version (including material not subsequently published in book form) appeared January-May 1895 The New Review: hb/uncredited]
- The Wonderful Visit (London: J M Dent and Co, 1895) [hb/]
- The Island of Doctor Moreau (London: William Heinemann, 1896) [Wells's preferred text: illus/CRA: hb/]
- The Island of Doctor Moreau: A Possibility (Chicago, Illinois: Stone and Kimball, 1896) [vt of the above: omissions and editing practice suggest that Wells delivered it to the US publishers before editing the UK manuscript: hb/]
- The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance (London: C Arthur Pearson, 1897) [first appeared 12 June-7 August 1897 Pearson's Weekly: hb/uncredited]
- The War of the Worlds (London: William Heinemann, 1898) [first appeared April-December 1897 Idler: hb/]
- When the Sleeper Wakes (London: Harper and Brothers, 1899) [first appeared 7 January 1899-6 May 1899 The Graphic: illus/Henri Lanos]
- The First Men in the Moon (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bowen-Merrill Company, 1901) [first appeared November 1900-April 1901 Cosmopolitan: hb/E Hering]
- The Sea-Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine (London: Methuen and Co, 1902) [first appeared July-December 1901 Pearson's Magazine: hb/]
- The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth (London: Macmillan and Co, 1904) [first appeared December 1903-June 1904 Pearson's Magazine: hb/]
- A Modern Utopia (London: Chapman and Hall, 1905) [fiction/nonfiction: first appeared October 1904-April 1905 Fortnightly Review: illus/Edmund J Sullivan: hb/]
- In the Days of the Comet (London: Macmillan and Co, 1906) [first appeared 19 February-28 March 1906 Daily Chronicle: hb/]
- The War in the Air: And Particularly How Mr Bert Smallways Fared While it Lasted (London: George Bell and Sons, 1908) [first appeared January-December 1908 Pall Mall Magazine: hb/A C Michael]
- The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind (London: Macmillan and Co, 1914) [first appeared December 1913-May 1914 English Review: hb/nonpictorial]
- Men Like Gods (London: Cassell and Company, 1923) [first appeared November 1922-June 1923 Hearst's International: hb/]
- The World of William Clissold: A Novel at a New Angle (London: Ernest Benn, 1926) [published in three volumes: hb/William Rothenstein and David Low]
- The Dream (London: Jonathan Cape, 1924) [first appeared October 1923-May 1924 Nash's and Pall Mall Magazine: Colonial edition containing the statement "All these are in print and on sale whatever a lazy bookseller may say to the contrary": this was removed from all subsequent issues: hb/Horosho]
- Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island (London: Ernest Benn, 1928) [hb/William Orpen]
- The King who Was a King: The Book of a Film (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929) [no film was made from this text: hb/Paul Rotha]
- The Autocracy of Mr Parham: His Remarkable Adventures in this Changing World (London: William Heinemann, 1930) [illus/hb/David Low]
- The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1933) [portions first appeared 25 June--11 September 1933 Sunday Express: hb/]
- The Holy Terror (London: Michael Joseph, 1939) [hb/Barlow]
- All Aboard for Ararat (London: Secker and Warburg, 1940) [hb/John Farleigh]
- Babes in the Darkling Wood (London: Secker and Warburg, 1940) [hb/]
- You Can't Be Too Careful: A Sample of Life 1901-1951 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1941) [hb/]
non-fantastic novels (selected)
- The Wheels of Chance: A Holiday Adventure (London: J M Dent and Co, 1896) [first appeared 9 May-19 September 1896 To-day: illus/hb/J Ayton Symington]
- Love and Mr Lewisham: The Story of a Very Young Couple (New York: Frederick A Stokes, 1899) [first appeared 10 November 1899-9 February 1900 Times Weekly Edition: hb/]
- Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul (London: Macmillan and Co, 1905) [first published January-December 1905 Pall Mall Magazine: hb/]
- Tono-Bungay (London: Macmillan and Co, 1909) [first appeared September 1908-January 1909 Popular Magazine: hb/]
- Ann Veronica (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1909) [hb/]
- The History of Mr Polly (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1910) [first appeared October 1909-March 1910 State Magazine: hb/]
- The New Machiavelli (New York: Duffield and Company, 1910) [first appeared May-October 1910 English Review: hb/]
- The Research Magnificent (London: Macmillan and Co, 1915) [hb/]
- Mr Britling Sees It Through (London: Cassell and Company, 1916) [first appeared 20 May-21 October 1916 The Nation: hb/]
- The Undying Fire (London: Cassell and Company, 1916) [first appeared 29 March-10 May 1919 New Republic: hb/]
- Christina Alberta's Father (London: Jonathan Cape, 1925) [first appeared 21 February-23 May 1925 Collier's as "Sargon, King of Kings": hb/John Austen]
- The World of William Clissold: A Novel at a New Angle (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1926) [published in three volumes: hb/]
- The Bulpington of Blup: Adventures, Poses, Stresses, Conflicts, and Disaster in a Contemporary Brain (London: Hutchinson and Co, 1933) [Ford Madox Ford: hb/]
collections and stories
There are numerous posthumous collections; unless they contain new material, they are not listed below.
- The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (London: Methuen and Co, 1895) [coll: hb/]
- The Red Room (Chicago, Illinois: Stone and Kimball, 1896) [story: first appeared 12 February The Chaplet: pb/nonpictorial]
- The Plattner Story and Others (London: Methuen and Co, 1897) [coll: hb/]
- Thirty Strange Stories (New York: Edward Arnold, 1897) [coll: hb/F R K]
- Tales of Space and Time (London: Harper and Brothers, 1900) [coll: book dated 1899: hb/]
- Twelve Stories and a Dream (London: Macmillan and Co, 1903) [coll: hb/]
- The Door in the Wall and Other Stories (New York: Michael Kennerley, 1911) [coll: hb/]
- The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1911) [coll: illus/Dudley Tennant: hb/]
- The Country of the Blind (New York: Mitchell Kennelly, 1915) [story: chap: cut version of above, printing title story only: first published April 1904 Strand: hb/nonpictorial]
- The Country of the Blind 1939 (London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1939) [chap: rev vt as coll: containing the original story plus Wells's 1939 reworking of the text: illus/Clifford Webb: hb/nonpictorial]
- Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and the Last Trump: Being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times: Prepared for Publication by Reginald Bliss: With an Ambiguous Introduction by H G Wells (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1915) as by Reginald Bliss [coll: comprising essays, stories and spoofs: illus/hb/H G Wells]
- The Short Stories of H.G. Wells (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1927) [coll: hb/]
- Tales of Life and Adventure (London: W Collins and Company, 1923) [coll: assembling stories from previous collections: in the publisher's Collins' 2/6 Novels series: hb/uncredited]
- The Adventures of Tommy (London: Amalgamated Press, 1928) [story: chap: first appeared December 1928 Woman's Journal: hb/]
- The Stolen Body and Other Tales of the Unexpected (London: W Collins and Company, 1931) [coll: assembling stories from previous collections: in the publisher's Novel Library series: hb/uncredited]
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles (Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius, 1931) [story: first appeared July 1898 The Illustrated London News as "Man Who Could Work Miracles": pb/nonpictorial]
- The Scientific Romances of H G Wells (London: Victor Gollancz, 1933) [omni: containing eight titles: The Time Machine; The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Invisible Man; The War of the Worlds; The First Men in the Moon; The Food of the Gods; In the Days of the Comet; Men Like Gods: intro by H G Wells: hb/nonpictorial]
- Seven Famous Novels (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1934) [omni: cut vt of the above, eliminating Men Like Gods: hb/]
- The Croquet Player: A Story (London: Chatto and Windus, 1936) [novella: first published 25 November-1 December 1936 Evening Standard: hb/Harold Jones]
- The Camford Visitation (London: Methuen and Co, 1937) [novella: chap: hb/nonpictorial]
- Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia (London: Chatto and Windus, 1937) [novella: hb/Harold Jones]
- The Brothers (London: Chatto and Windus, 1938) [novella: first appeared 9 January-13 February Sunday Referee: hb/Harold Jones]
- The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life (London: William Heinemann, 1945) [novella: chap: hb/nonpictorial]
- A Story of the Days to Come (London: Corgi Books, 1976) [first appeared June-October 1899 Pall Mall Magazine, part one as "A Cure for Love: Anno Domini, 1996: A Story of the Days to Come", each of the five instalments being separately titled: pb/Chris Achilleos]
- The Man With a Nose and Other Uncollected Short Stories of H G Wells (London: Athlone Press, 1984) [coll: hb/]
- The Complete Stories of H G Wells (London: J M Dent and Co, 1998) [coll: including the above plus The Complete Stories: but newly edited and comprising a new work: edited by J R Hammond: hb/]
- The Betterave Papers: And, Aesop's Quinine for Delphi (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire: H G Wells Society, 2001) [coll: chap: "The Betterave Papers" first appeared July 1945 Cornhill Magazine: pb/]
nonfiction (selected)
- Textbook of Biology (London: W B Clive, 1892) [nonfiction: published in two volumes: book is dated 1893: hb/]
- Honours Physiography (London: Joseph Hughes, 1892) with R A Gregory [nonfiction: book is dated 1893: hb/]
- Certain Personal Matters: A Collection of Material, Mostly Autobiographical (London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1898) [nonfiction: coll: hb/]
- Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Human Progress upon Human Life and Thought (London: Chapman and Hall, 1901) [nonfiction: coll of linked essays: book is dated 1902: first appeared April-December 1901 Fortnightly Review: hb/]
- The Discovery of the Future: A Discourse Delivered to the Royal Institution on January 24, 1902 (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1902) [nonfiction: chap: hb/]
- Mankind in the Making (London: Chapman and Hall, 1903) [nonfiction: coll of linked essays: early version appeared September 1902-September 1903 Fortnightly Review: hb/]
- The Future in America: A Search After Realities (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906) [nonfiction: coll of linked essays: first appeared 30 June-10 October 1906 The Tribune: hb/]
- First & Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life (London: Archibald Constable and Co, 1908) [nonfiction: hb/]
- New Worlds for Old (London: Archibald Constable and Co, 1908) [nonfiction: coll of linked essays: portions first appeared July 1907-March 1908- Grand Magazine: hb/]
- Floor Games (London: Frank Palmer, 1911) [nonfiction/fiction: graph: illus/hb/R Sinclair]
- Little Wars: A Game for Boys from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girls Who Like Boys' Games: With an Appendix on Kriegspiel (London: Frank Palmer, 1913) [nonfiction/fiction: graph: illus/hb/R Sinclair]
- The War that Will End War (London: Frank and Cecil Palmer, 1914) [nonfiction: pb/]
- What Is Coming?: A Forecast of Things After the War (London: Cassell and Company, 1916) [nonfiction: hb/]
- War and the Future: Italy, France and Britain at War (London: Cassell and Company, 1917) [nonfiction: hb/]
- In the Fourth Year: Anticipations of World Peace (London: Chatto and Windus, 1918) [nonfiction: hb/]
- The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (London: George Newnes Limited, 1919-1920) [nonfiction: published in twenty-four parts released fortnightly between November 1919 and November 1920: pb/various artists]
- Russia in the Shadows (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920) [nonfiction: hb/]
- The Salvaging of Civilization (London: Cassell and Company, 1921) [nonfiction: hb/]
- A Short History of the World (London: Cassell and Company, 1922) [nonfiction: hb/]
- The Way the World is Going: Guesses and Forecasts of the World Ahead (1928);
- The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928) [nonfiction: coll of linked essays: first appeared 7 April-7 July 1928 T.P.'s Weekly: hb/]
- The Science of Life (1930) with Julian Huxley and G P Wells;
- The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931) [nonfiction: published in two volumes: hb/]
- Stalin-Wells Talk: The Verbatim Record and a Discussion by G Bernard Shaw, H G Wells, J M Keynes, Ernest Toller and Others: With Three Caricatures and Cover Design by Low (London: The New Statesman and Nation, 1934) with G Bernard Shaw et al [nonfiction: chap: first appeared 27 October-22 December 1934 New Statesman: illus/pb/David Low]
- Experiment in Autobiography: Discoveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since 1866) (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd/London: The Cresset Press, 1934) [nonfiction: published in two volumes: first version appeared 17 September 1934-6 November 1934 Daily Herald: hb/nonpictorial]
- The New America: The New World (London: The Cresset Press, 1935) [nonfiction: chap: portions first appeared 10 May-31 May 1935 Manchester Guardian: hb/E McKnight Kauffer]
- The Anatomy of Frustration: A Modern Synthesis (London: The Cresset Press, 1936) [nonfiction: first appeared 17 January-4 December 1936 The Spectator: hb/]
- World Brain (London: Methuen, 1938) [nonfiction: hb/]
- The Fate of Homo Sapiens: An Unemotional Statement of the Things That Are Happening to Him Now, and of the Immediate Possibilities Confronting Him (London: Secker and Warburg, 1939) [nonfiction: hb/]
- The New World Order: Whether it is Attainable, How it can be Attained, and What Sort of World a World at Peace Will Have To Be (London: Secker and Warburg, 1940) [nonfiction: first appeared November 1939-February 1940 Fortnightly Review: hb/]
- The Common Sense of War and Peace: World Revolution or War Unending (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1940) [nonfiction: pb/nonpictorial]
- The Rights of Man; Or, What Are We Fighting For? (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1940) [nonfiction: pb/nonpictorial]
- Guide to the New World: A Handbook of Constructive World Revolution (London: Victor Gollancz, 1941) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Phoenix: A Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Reorganization (London: Secker and Warburg, 1942) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Science and the World Mind (London: The New Europe Publishing Co, 1942) [nonfiction: chap: first given as lecture September 1941 British Association for the Advancement of Science, London: pb/nonpictorial]
- The Conquest of Time: Written to Replace his First and Last Things (London: Watts and Co, 1942) [nonfiction: hb/]
- '42 to '44: A Contemporary Memoir Upon Human Behaviour During the Crisis in the World Revolution (London: Secker and Warburg, 1944) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Mind at the End of its Tether (London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1945) [nonfiction: chap: hb/nonpictorial]
- H.G. Wells: Journalism and Prophecy, 1893-1946: An Anthology (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1964) [nonfiction: coll: edited by W Warren Wagar: hb/]
- H.G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1975) [nonfiction and fiction: coll: of interest for previously uncollected nonfiction: edited by Robert M Philmus and David Y Hughes: hb/]
- H.G. Wells's Literary Criticism (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980) [nonfiction: coll: edited by Patrick Parrinder and Robert M Philmus: hb/]
- H.G. Wells in Love: Postscript to an Experiment in Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1984) [nonfiction: edited by G P Wells: hb/photographic]
about the author
Selected titles from a very large critical literature:
- J D Beresford. H G Wells (London: Nisbet and Co, 1915) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Sidney Dark. The Outline of H G Wells: The Superman on the Street (London: Leonard Parsons, 1922) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Hilaire Belloc. A Companion to H G Wells's Outline of History (London: Sheed and Ward, 1926) [nonfiction: further polemics were published: they are not listed here: hb/]
- Geoffrey H Wells. The Works of H G Wells: A Bibliography Dictionary and Subject-Index (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1926) [nonfiction: bibliography plus other material: hb/uncredited]
- Bernard Bergonzi. The Early H.G. Wells: A Study of the Scientific Romances (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1961) [nonfiction: hb/]
- W Warren Wagar. H.G. Wells and the World State (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1961) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Julius Kagarlitski. The Life and Thought of H.G. Wells (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1966) [nonfiction: trans by Moura Budberg of the 1963 Russian original, Ocherk Zhizni I Tvorchestva: hb/]
- David C Smith. H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal: A Biography (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1966) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Mark R Hillegas. The Future as Nightmare: H G Wells and the Anti-Utopians (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Patrick Parrinder. H.G. Wells (Edinburgh, Scotland, and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1970) [nonfiction: hb/photographic]
- Patrick Parrinder, editor. H.G. Wells: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972) [nonfiction: anth: hb/Andrew Young]
- Norman and Jeanne Mackenzie. H.G. Wells: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Jack Williamson. H.G. Wells: Critic of Progress (Baltimore, Maryland: Mirage Press, 1973) [nonfiction: hb/Greg Bear]
- Bernard Bergonzi, editor. H.G. Wells: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1976) [nonfiction: anth: hb/]
- Darko Suvin and Robert M Philmus, editors. H.G. Wells and Modern Science Fiction (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press, 1977) [nonfiction: anth: hb/]
- Brian Ash. Who's Who in H G Wells (London: Elm Tree Books, 1979) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- J R Hammond. An H G Wells Companion: A Guide to the Novels, Romances and Short Stories (London: Macmillan, 1979) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Frank D McConnell. The Science Fiction of H.G. Wells (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981) [nonfiction: hb/Kelly Freas]
- John Huntington. The Logic of Fantasy: H.G. Wells and Science Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Peter Kemp. H.G. Wells and the Culminating Ape: Biological Themes and Imaginative Obsessions (New York: St Martin's Press, 1982) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Anthony West. Aspects of a Life (New York: Random House, 1984) [nonfiction: the author is the son of Wells and Rebecca West (1892-1983): hb/]
- H G Wells Society, compilers. H.G. Wells: A Comprehensive Bibliography (London: H G Wells Society: 1966) [bibliography: chap: further editions 1968, 1972, 1986, others?: hb/]
- Leon Stover. The Prophetic Soul: A Reading of H G Wells's Things to Come Together with his Film Treatment "Whither Mankind?" and the Postproduction Script (Both Never Before Published) (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1987) [nonfiction: Things to Come: hb/nonpictorial]
- J R Hammond. H G Wells and the Modern Novel (London: Macmillan, 1988) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Patrick Parrinder and Christopher Rolfe, editors. H.G. Wells under Revision: Proceedings of the H.G. Wells International Symposium, London, July, 1986 (London and Toronto: Susquehanna University Press, 1990) [nonfiction: anth: hb/]
- Michael Foot. H.G.: The History of Mr Wells (London: Doubleday, 1995) [nonfiction: hb/Ralph Sallon]
- Patrick Parrinder. Shadows of the Future: H G Wells, Science Fiction and Prophecy (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 1995) [nonfiction: hb/]
- J Percy Smith, editor. Bernard Shaw and H G Wells (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1995) [nonfiction: anth: in the publisher's Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw series: hb/Wesley W Bates]
- Patrick Parrinder and John S Partington, editors. The Reception of H. G. Wells in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005) [nonfiction: anth: hb/]
- Robert Frankel. Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890-1950 (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2007) [nonfiction: G K Chesterton: W T Stead: hb/Bruce Gore]
- Keith Williams. H G Wells, Modernity and the Movies (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2007) [nonfiction: hb/still from The Invisible Man (1933)]
- Justin E A Busch. The Utopian Vision of H G Wells (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2009) [nonfiction: pb/]
- Steven McLean. The Early Fiction of H G Wells (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Karoly Pinter. The Anatomy of Utopia: Narration, Estrangements and Ambiguity in More, Wells, Huxley & Clarke (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2010) [nonfiction: hb/Digital Illustration]
- Simon J James. Maps of Utopia: H G Wells, Modernity, And the End of Culture (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2012) [nonfiction: hb/]
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