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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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H.G. Wells
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(Herbert George Wells, 1866–1946)
Novelist and pioneer of science fiction. The son of an unsuccessful small shopkeeper and of a domestic servant (his mother was eventually housekeeper at *Uppark), and himself apprenticed to a draper after leaving school at 14, he used his own experiences as the basis for a series of novels about lower-middle-class life – Love and Mr Lewisham (1900), *Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909) and The *History of Mr Polly (1910).
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But he had made his name earlier with some very original works of science fiction. Like their modern successors (but unlike the earlier Jules Verne), these use the dislocation of time and space to comment on our own society. The *Time Machine (1895) was the first; others include The Invisible Man (1897), The *War of the Worlds (1898) and The First Men in the Moon (1901). His famous film script for *Things to Come (1936) was in the same tradition. The Country of the Blind, published in a collection in 1911, has remained a classic among short stories.
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Many of Wells' early books are about society changing and improving, and from 1903 he became an active member of the *Fabian Society (briefly as it turned out, because he soon quarrelled with the star turn, G.B. *Shaw). He was also a firm advocate of sexual freedom, and had a long relationship with Rebecca *West.
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