Who was H.G. Wells ?

Wells became an overnight literary sensation with the publication of the novel The Time Machine.

H. G. Wells: (Herbert George Wells), 1866–1946, English author. Although he is probably best remembered for his works of science fiction, he was also an imaginative social thinker, working assiduously to remove all vestiges of Victorian social, moral, and religious attitudes from 20th-century life.

Wells later developed feelings for feminist writer Rebecca West, and they had a son, Anthony, together. Jane died of cancer in 1927.

Wells continued to write what some have called scientific romances, but others consider early examples of science fiction

For roughly 50 years, Wells devoted his life to writing and his output during this time was amazing.

He was apprenticed to a draper at 14 and was later able through grants and scholarships to attend the Univ. of London (grad. 1888). Inspired by the teaching of T. H. Huxley, Wells taught biology until 1893, when he began his career as a novelist.

he published the The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898).

The Island of Doctor Moreau told the story of a man who encounters a scientist conducting the gruesome experiments on animals, creating new species of creatures.

Extremely prolific, he was to write more than 100 books. His early novels and best-known books, the so-called scientific romances, are works of science fiction, full of fantasy and fascinating pseudoscientific speculations, and exemplifying the political and social beliefs of his time. They include The Time Machine (1895), The Wonderful Visit (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898).

Wells wrote many essays, articles and nonfiction books. He served as a book reviewer for the Saturday Review for several years, during which time he promoted the careers of James Joyce and Joseph Conrad.

In the novels of his middle period Wells turned from the fantastic to the realistic, delineating with great energy and color the world he lived in.

Wells supported socialist ideals. For a time, he was a member of the Fabian Society, a group that sought social reform and believed that the best political system was socialism.

n 1920, H.G. Wells published The Outline of History, perhaps his best selling work during his lifetime.

books, considered his finest achievement, include Kipps (1905), Tono-Bungay (1909), Ann Veronica (1909), The History of Mr. Polly (1910), and Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916)

His later books are primarily novels of ideas in which he sets forth his view of the plans and concessions individuals must make in order to survive. Included among these final works, which became increasingly pessimistic as Wells aged, are The World of William Clissold (1926), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), World Brain (1938), and Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945). His other works include the immensely popular Outline of History (1920) and The Science of Life (1929), which was written in collaboration with his son G. P. Wells and Julian Huxley.

His later books are primarily novels of ideas in which he sets forth his view of the plans and concessions individuals must make in order to survive. Included among these final works, which became increasingly pessimistic as Wells aged, are The World of William Clissold (1926), The Shape of Things to Come (1933), World Brain (1938), and Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945). His other works include the immensely popular Outline of History (1920) and The Science of Life (1929), which was written in collaboration with his son G. P. Wells and Julian Huxley.

Wells branched out into film in the 1930s.

Wells, H. G. (1866–1946). Shopkeeper's son who jumped the counter to become successful author and eventually teacher-at-large to the human race. A scholarship to what is now Imperial College, London, where he studied under T. H. Huxley, suggested the power of science to make us free, though it was an imaginative energy which fuelled his early romances The Time Machine (1895) and The War of the Worlds (1898)

Moving in literary and Fabian circles, he saw the novel as a medium for discussing problems ‘raised in such bristling multitude by our contemporary social development’. Perhaps no one did more to shape that development, and after the First World War he increasingly abandoned fiction for analysis and exhortation.

An internationally famous intellectual and author, Wells traveled widely

The best-selling Outline of History (1920) offered mankind ‘salvation by history’, lasting world peace only to be secured by learning its lessons. Yet Wells's faith in human potential was not blind to obstacles to be overcome, and in the novels too comedy and pessimism are mingled.

H. G. Wells
BORN: 1866, Bromley, England
DIED: 1946, London, England
NATIONALITY: British

In 1891, Wells married his cousin, Isabel Mary Wells, but the union didn't last.

He and Jane had two children together, sons George Philip and Frank.

Herbert George Wells is best remembered today as an author of several enduring science fiction classics, among them The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon and The Island of Doctor Moreau.