H. G. Wells

by J. D. Beresford

And now that I have attempted my interpretation, I look back and confess that it is a very personal reading of my subject. I may have sought too eagerly for all those passages in which I found a note that roused in me the most thrilling response. I may have omitted to display vital issues that more truly characterise H.G. Wells than the appealing urgencies, idealisms, and fluencies that I have found most sympathetic and most admirable. But if I appear to have done him an injustice in some particulars, it is rather because I have been absorbed by the issue I sought to reveal, than because I deliberately weighed and rejected others. This short essay can be no more than an introduction to the works it describes. It was never intended to be critical. I have had no intention of discussing technique, nor of weighing Mr Wells against his contemporaries in any literary scale. But I have attempted to interpret the spirit and the message that I have found in his books; and I have made the essay in the hope that any reader who may consequently be stirred to read or to re-read Wells will do so with a mind prepared to look below the surface expression.

I feel no shade of hesitation when I say that H.G. Wells is a great writer. His fecundity, his mastery of language, his comprehension of character are gifts and abilities that certain of his contemporaries have in equal, or in some particulars in larger measure. But he alone has used his perfected art for a definite end. He has not been content to record his observations of the world as he has seen it, to elaborate this or that analysis of human motive, or to relate the history of a few selected lives. He has done all this, but he has done infinitely more by pointing the possible road of our endeavour. Through all his work moves the urgency of one who would create something more than a mere work of art to amuse the multitude or afford satisfaction to the critic. His chief achievement is that he has set up the ideal of a finer civilisation, of a more generous life than that in which we live; an ideal that, if it is still too high for us of this generation, will be appreciated and followed by the people of the future.

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A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF H.G. WELLS'

PRINCIPAL WRITINGS

• Select Conversations with an Uncle (Lane). 1895.
• The Time Machine—An Invention (Heinemann). 1895.
• *The Stolen Bacillus and Other Stories (Macmillan). 1895.
• The Wonderful Visit (Dent). 1895.
• The Island of Dr Moreau (Heinemann). 1896.
• The Wheels of Chance (Dent). 1896.
• *The Plattner Story (Macmillan). 1897.
• The Invisible Man (MacMillan). 1897.
• The War of the Worlds (Heinemann). 1898.
• When the Sleeper Wakes (Nelson). 1899. [Afterwards published (1911) in a revised and altered edition, as "The Sleeper Awakes.">[
• *Tales of Space and Time (Macmillan). 1899.
• Love and Mr Lewisham (Macmillan). 1900.
• Certain Personal Matters (Unwin). 1901.
• Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (Chapman & Hall). 1901.
• The First Men in the Moon (Macmillan). 1901.
• The Discovery of the Future (A Lecture given at the Royal Institute). 1902.
• The Sea Lady—A Tissue of Moonshine. 1902.
• Mankind in the Making (Chapman & Hall). 1903.
• *Twelve Stories and a Dream (Macmillan). 1903.
• The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth (Macmillan). 1904.
• A Modern Utopia (Nelson). 1905.
• Kipps—The Story of a Simple Soul (Macmillan). 1905.
• In the Days of the Comet (Macmillan). 1906.
• The Future in America—A Search after Realities (Chapman & Hall). 1906.
• First and Last Things—A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life (Constable). 1907.
• The Misery of Boots (Fabian Tract). 1907.
• Socialism and Marriage (Fabian Tract). 1908.
• New Worlds for Old (Constable). 1908.
• The War in the Air (Bell). 1908.
• Tono-Bungay (Macmillan). 1909.
• Ann Veronica—A Modern Love Story (Unwin). 1909.
• The History of Mr Polly (Nelson). 1910.
• The New Machiavelli (Lane) 1910.
• The Country of the Blind and Other Stories (Nelson). 1911.
• Floor Games (A book about play for children) (Palmer). 1911.
• Socialism and the Great State (A contribution by H.G. Wells. The book is written by fifteen authors) (Harper). 1911.
• Marriage (Macmillan). 1912.
• The Passionate Friends—A Novel (Macmillan). 1913.
• Little Wars (A book about play for children) (Palmer). 1913.
• An Englishman Looks at the World (Cassell). 1914.
• The World Set Free—A Story of Mankind (Macmillan). 1914.

The volumes marked * are collections of short stories, the best of which were republished in "The Country of the Blind," 1911.

NOTE.—Some of these volumes have been published under different titles in the U.S.A. (See American Bibliography.)

AMERICAN BIBLIOGRAPHY