Profile Major Works Resources

Herbert George Wells, 1866-1946.

Famous British novelist Herbert George Wells ("H.G. Wells") was also a evolutionary thinker and socialist activist. 

Of working class origins, H.G. Wells managed to carve out an early career as a science teacher. Wells wrote his most famous novels of science fiction in the late 1890s.  Wells began to abandon science fiction after 1900, and turned to novels illustrative of working class and lower middle class life, which dovetailed into his increasing interest in socialism.

A biologist by training, Wells nurtured an evolutionary theory of economic and social development and progress towards a human utopia. Seeing the evolutionary seed, H.G. Wells became a convert to the socialist. movement  and joined the  Fabian Society in 1903.  However, Wells eventually broke with the Fabians in 1909 on the issue of mass agitation (or rather lack of it).  Wells's Fabian period is parodied in his 1911 novel. 

H.G. Wells articulated his evolutionary theory of history in his Outline of History (1920)

Through much of his life, Wells delighted in authoring essays and books making forecasts of scientific, technological, political and social developments in the future, which have been retroactively hailed as prescient. His original forecasts (e.g. 1901) were usually optimistic, but with the arrival of the First World War, they became darker and more pessimistic.  

 

  

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Major Works of H.G. Wells

  • Textbook of Biology, 1893
  • Select Conversations with an Uncle, 1895 [bk]
  • The Stolen Bacillus and other incidents, 1895 [1903 repr]
  • The Time Machine, 1895 [bk]
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau, 1896 [bk]
  • The Invisible Man, 1897 [bk]
  • Thirty Strange Stories, 1897 [bk]
  • The Wheels of Chance: a bicycling idyll, 1897 [bk]
  • The War of the Worlds, 1898 [bk]
  • Tales of Space and Time, 1899 [bk]
  • Love and Mr. Lewisham, 1900. [bk]
  • The First Men in the Moon, 1901 [bk] [repr]
  • Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress on Human Life and Thought, 1901. [bk]
  • The Sea Lady: a tissue of moonshine, 1902 [bk]
  • The Discovery of the Future: A discourse, 1902 [bk] [1913 repr]
  • Twelve Stories and a Dream, 1903 [bk] [1909 ed]
  • Mankind in the Making, 1903. v.1, v.2 [1904 ed]
  • The Plattner Stories and others, 1904 [bk]
  • The Food of the Gods, and how it came to earth, 1904 [bk]
  • A Modern Utopia, 1905 [bk]
  • Kipps: the story of a simple soul, 1905 [1922 repr]
  • In the Days of the Comet, 1906 [bk]
  • The Future in America: A search after realities, 1906 [bk] [1907 repr]
  • First and Last Things: A confession of faith and a rule of life, 1908 [bk]
  • New Worlds for Old, 1908 [bk] [1919 repr]
  • Tono-Bungay, 1908 [bk] [1909 v.1, v.2]
  • The History of Mr. Polly, 1909 [bk]
  • The New Machiavelli, 1911 [bk] [1914 repr]
  • Marriage, 1912, v.1, v.2 [1913 ed]
  • The Passionate Friends, 1913 [bk]
  • The Wife of Sir Francis Harman, 1914 [bk]
  • Social Forces in England and America, 1914 [bk]
  • An Englishman Looks at the World: being a series of unrestrained remarks upon contemporary matters, 1914 [bk]
  • The World Set Free: a story of mankind, 1914 [bk]
  • The War that Will End War, 1914 [bk]
  • Boon: the mind of the race, 1915
  • The Research Magnificent, 1915 [bk] [1919 repr]
  • Bealby, 1915 [bk]
  • Mr. Britling Sees It Through, 1916 [bk]
  • What is Coming? A European forecast, 1916 [bk]
  • God, the Invisible King, 1917 [bk]
  • The War in the Air, 1917 [bk]
  • War and the Future: Italy, France and Britain at war, 1917 [bk]
  • The Fourth Year: Anticipations of a World Peace, 1918 [bk]
  • Joan and Peter: the story of an education, 1918 [bk]
  • The Idea of a League of Nations (with others), 1919 [bk]
  • An Outline of History: being a plain history of life and mankind, 1920, v.1, v.2  [1921 3rd ed], [1922-23, 4th ed., v.1, v.2 v.3, v.4]
  • The Salvaging of Civilization: the probable future of mankind, 1921 [bk]
  • A Short History of the World, 1922. [bk], [bart]
  • The Secret Places of the Heart, 1922 [bk]
  • Washington and the Riddle of Peace, 1922 [bk]
  • A Forecast of World Affairs, 1925
  • The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution, 1928
  • The Way the World is Going: Guesses & Forecasts of the Years Ahead, 1928
  • The Way to World Peace, 1930.
  • The Science of Life (with J. Huxley and G.P. Wells), 1931
  • The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind, 1931
  • After Democracy: Addresses and Papers on the Present World Situation, 1932
  • The Shape of Things to Come, 1933
  • Experiment in Autobiography, 1934
  • An Outline of Man's Work and Wealth, 1936
  • Phoenix, a Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Reorganisation, 1942
  • Science and the World Mind, 1942
  • The Mind at the End of Its Tether, 1945
  • Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction, (ed. R.M. Phlmus, and D.Y. Hughes) 1975 [bk]

 
HET

 
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Resources on H.G. Wells

  • H.G. Wells Society website
  • H.G. Wells collection at Bartleby [bart]
  • H.G. Wells page at Literature Network
  • "Utopian Pessimist" by Adam Kirsch, 2011, New Yorker [online]
  • H.G. Wells at biography.com [online]
  • Wells entry at Britannica
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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