Wells, H. G. (1866–1946)

As a novelist, prophet, and gadfly, Herbert George Wells was one of the 20th-century's most multital-ented writers. Born on September 21, 1866, in modest circumstances in Bromley, Kent, Wells narrowly avoided a life of penury and obscurity in the drapery trade his mother planned for him. He studied at the Normal School of Science at South Kensington (now the Royal College of Science and part of the University of London) under T. H. Huxley (1825–1895), and taught for a while before being able to earn a living as a writer. Wells's importance as a thinker has long been disputed, but few would deny his influence. Central to his thought was the seriousness with which he took evolutionary time and its implications for all living beings, including Homo sapiens. Indeed, Wells's work can be seen as the development of his understanding as to just how deeply and totally all living beings are determined by evolutionary time. His first published writing was a series of what were then known as scientific romances, now known as science fiction. The best of these works, The Time Machine (1895), The[Page 1426]Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898) remain classics in their field to this day.

Common wisdom says that these works represent Wells at his best, but his writing career lasted another 45 years and included some very significant books. After the scientific romances, Wells moved on to novels about life, the best of which were Kipps (1905), Ann Veronica, Tono-Bungay (both 1909), The History of Mr. Polly (1910), and The New Machiavelli (1911). These novels can be read as insightful stories about human interaction and for their specific insights into the mores of Edwardian England. Wells then moved on to what he later called his prig novels: Marriage (1912), The Passionate Friends (1913), and The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1913). Less successful as novels, these books revolved around ideas of social reform and personal commitment to living one's life fully and in the public interest.

As it did for most people of his generation, the onset of the First World War produced a new range of conflicts that Wells felt the need to explore. While being suspicious of patriotism, Wells deeply loved England, and his wartime books, both fiction and nonfiction, reflected this tension. The best of his wartime works were Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916) and The Undying Fire (1919). The war also brought on a short phase of quasi-mystical religiosity, expounded in God the Invisible King (1917), although Wells soon tired of that approach and returned to what he called in his autobiography “the sturdy atheism of my youth.”

After the war, Wells embarked on a series of what have been called textbooks for the world. They were the hugely popular Outline of History (1920), The Science of Life (1931), and The Work, Wealth, and Happiness of Mankind (1932). Each of these was very influential despite a generally disdainful reception from the academic community. In each of these works Wells was concerned to place humanity in its natural setting and subject to the same evolutionary pressures of change and development as all other living things. He downplayed the role of great men in history and was suspicious of climactic events and turning points and other historical devices designed, in his mind, to flatter the so-called great men. Wells hoped these books would become tools by which people took control of their destiny and worked cooperatively toward a new planetary humanism.

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