H. G. Wells

EARLY LIFE 

He was born Herbert George Wells at Atlas House, 162 High Street in Bromley, Kent on September 21, 1866. (A plaque at 47 High Street marks his birthplace).

His father, Joseph, was a former domestic gardener and at the time of his birth a retail china shop owner which also sold sporting goods.

Joseph Wells was also a professional Kent cricketer. He was the first man to take four first class wickets with four successive balls playing against Sussex in 1862.

In 1877 an accident left Joseph Wells with a fractured thigh. The accident effectively put an end to Joseph's career as a cricketer and his earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss.

Joseph's mother, Sarah Neal, was a not very efficient domestic servant, who later became a housekeeper.

Both parents were members of the working class who earned a meagre income.  An inheritance had allowed them to acquire a shop selling china and sporting goods, but it failed to prosper.

Photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1920

One of four children, Herbert was the spoilt youngest child. He was called "Bertie" in the family.

When Herbert was 8, the son of the landlord of The Bell at Bromley threw him in the air and shouted "Whose kid are you?" The boy landed awkwardly and broke his leg. As young Herbert lay on the sofa recovering, the landlord's wife sent in books for him to read. From that time he was in love with reading.

Snowed in one winter at the stately home Uppark, Midhurst, where his mother was the housekeeper, young Herbert produced a daily newspaper called the Uppark Alarmist. He also found a telescope in one of the attics with which he looked at moon craters.

In 1874 Herbert entered Thomas Morley's Commercial Academy, a private school where he studied until 1880.

CAREER 

As a teenager Wells worked several apprenticeships, including a chemist's apprentice in Midhurst, West Sussex, to help pay for family costs.

During his final apprenticeship between 1880 and 1883, Wells spent an unhappy time as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium, Hyde's.

In 1883 his Hyde's employer dismissed Wells, claiming to be dissatisfied with him. The young man was reportedly not displeased with this ending to his apprenticeship as it allowed him to become a pupil teacher at Midhurst Grammar school.

The following year Wells successfully obtained a place at the Normal School of Science (later the Royal College of Science, now part of Imperial College) as a trainee science teacher. He entered the college with a scholarship which entitled him to free tuition and a guinea a week living costs. At the college he only excelled in zoology.

At the Normal School of Science Wells studied biology under T. H. Huxley.

The school year 1886 - 1887 was the last year of his studies. Having previously successfully passed his exams in both biology and physics, Wells' lack of interest in geology resulted in his failure to pass and the loss of his scholarship.

After his time at the Royal College of Science Wells got a job at a school on the Welsh borders but a football injury which seriously damaged his kidney meant he had to resign from his job. As he recovered at home he began to read and write.

At first Wells struggled to make ends meet. In one year he only sold one short story for £1.

Between 1888-94 Wells continued his writing with increasing success, while working with a university correspondence college as a tutor.

In 1889–90, Wells managed to find a post as an assistant master at Henley House School, a private school, where he taught science to Winnie the Pooh author A. A. Milne.

Wells studying in London c. 1890

His first published work was the Text-book of Biology, which was published by the University Correspondence College Press in two volumes in 1893.

Wells began writing short humorous articles for journals such as The Pall Mall Gazette. The author had thought of using some of this material in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette until the publisher asked him if he could instead write a serial novel on the same theme. Wells readily agreed and wrote his first novel The Time Machine. He was paid £100 on its publication by Heinemann in 1895, which first published the story in serial form in the January to May editions of The New Review.

During World War 1 after witnessing the horrific marches to the front in the face of sniper fire, mines, mud filled trenches etc, Wells devised an aerial rope-way system to do the same job.

Wells longed to be recognised as a scientist. He particularly coveted being a Fellow of the Royal Society.

WORKS 

Lionised in America and regarded as a prophet by the young in England, Wells' works were translated into every major language. He wrote around 100 books and is sometimes called The Father of Science Fiction.

The term "Outer space" was popularized in the early 20th century writings of H. G. Wells.

Wells published his first major work, The Time Machine, in 1895, when he was twenty-nine years old.

Originally called "The Chronic Argonauts," The Time Machine is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposely and selectively forwards or backwards in time.

The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle.

First edition cover

In 1960, Wells' The Time Machine novella was made into an American science fiction film, during which Rod Taylor ends up in year 802701 and a war between Elois and Morlocks.

The War of the Worlds was an 1898 science fiction book by H. G. Wells about Martians attacking Earth. The book's plot arose from Wells wondering "if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the [indigenous] Tasmanians?", which most modern scholars characterize as a genocide.

Actor Orson Welles stirred a national panic on October 30, 1938 with his radio drama The War of the Worlds based on Wells' novel. Listeners believed the "simulated" news bulletins in the broadcast were real and that Grovers Mill, New Jersey, actually was being invaded by men from Mars.Two people had heart attacks and many others were treated for shock.

A re-creation of the famous War of the Worlds broadcast performed in Ecuador in 1949 caused such a panic, that police and fire brigades rushed out of town to fight the supposed alien. After the people found out it was fake, they burned down the radio station, killing six people.

Robert H. Goddard was inspired to invent the rocket technology by The War of the Worlds.

Tomohiro Nishikado, who was in charge of the Taito Corporation game making department, drew inspiration for the aliens for his Space Invaders electronic shooter game from The War of the Worlds.

In his 1902 novel First Men on the Moon Wells correctly speculated that a man could move rapidly across the Moon with little hops and jumps.

The H. G. Wells crater, located on the far side of the Moon, was named after Wells in 1970.

H.G. Wells crater. By James Stuby based on NASA image

Wells' first non-fiction bestseller was Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. When originally serialised in 1901 in a magazine it was subtitled "An Experiment in Prophecy", and is considered his most explicitly futuristic work.

Wells' experiences as a draper's apprentice at Hyde's, where he worked a thirteen-hour day and slept in a dormitory with other apprentices, inspired his 1905 novel Kipps: The Story Of A Simple Soul. The book portrays the life of a draper's apprentice as well as providing a critique of society's distribution of wealth.

In 1941 a movie adaption was made of Kipps, starring Michael Redgrave as a shopkeeper who inherits money and gate crushes society.

The  Half a Sixpence 1967 musical film was based on Kipps. The title song was sung by leading man Tommy Steele, who was once mooted as Britain's answer to Elvis Presley.

Amber Reeves, one of Wells' mistresses, was his model for his 1909 novel Ann Veronica. The book caused an uproar when it was published due to the frankness with which it treated sexual relationships.

In The World Set Free in 1914, Wells wrote of an atomic weapon called an "atomic bomb." He was prophetically accurate about the effects of radioactive contamination and the bringing of radioactivity to practical use.

Wells coined the phrase for World War One, "The war that will end wars," in an article published in The Daily News on August 14, 1914 just days after the outbreak of World War I. Wells used the phrase to express his hope that the war would be so destructive that it would finally put an end to all future wars.

Wells's hope was not realized. World War I was followed by World War II, and there have been many other wars since then. However, Wells's phrase has become a rallying cry for those who believe that war can be abolished, and it continues to inspire people around the world to work for peace.

Wells' 1920 The Outline of History, a populist history, sold two million copies making him more money than any other of his books.

His 1933 The Shape of Things To Come was a work of scientific and political speculation in which Wells speculated on future events from 1933 until the year 2106. Some of his short-term predictions would come true, notably the aerial bombing of whole cities and the eventual development of weapons of mass destruction.

BELIEFS 

Raised by his devout Protestant mother to be an evangelical Christian, when Wells studied science at school and college he started to question his faith. He was particularly influenced by the lectures given at the Normal School of Science by T.H Huxley, a proponent of evolution.

Gripped by Huxley, Wells became a rationalist and evolutionist who believed in science to transform humanity. His rejection of religion for science made him pessimistic about the future.

Wells was part of the Debating Society at the Normal School of Science, which marked the beginning of his interest in a possible reformation of society. At first approaching the subject through studying The Republic by Plato, he soon turned to his contemporary ideas of socialism as expressed by the recently formed Fabian Society.

He was also among the founders of The Science School Journal, a school magazine which allowed Wells to express his views on literature and society.

The message of Wells' novels was that in the future society would advance to the fundamental principle that no member is more or less important than anyone else.

H. G. Wells in 1943

H.G. Wells was an enemy of Christianity, which he regarded as irrational. His populist The Outline of History, was a comprehensive assault on religion.

Wells in particular disliked Catholicism, as he believed overpopulation is "The greatest evil" facing the world and birth control opposed by Catholics is the answer. He loathed Catholics and believed Catholicism was a 'mental cancer'.

He disliked monarchists. Wells said of Queen Victoria "A great paperweight that for half a century sat upon people's minds."

Wells wrote some senseless things about the working classes and the poor, including advocating sterilising for them. He wrote in Anticipations: "These swarms of black and brown and dingy white and yellow people... I take it they will have to go."

Six years later, Wells' A Modern Utopia (1907) was almost Arian in its preference for the procreation of superior types of humanity to unfit ones such as Jews and dark-skinned people.

Wells once said: "There is no more evil thing in this world than race prejudice. It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of error in the world." Despite this he was a vehement anti-semitist who believed in an all-powerful police state. His lower middle class heroes like Mr Kipps were the sort he would have destroyed with his Ayrianish views.

Wells believed in a class structure and his pamphlets converted a lot of people to Socialism.

In 1921 and 22 Wells stood as Labour candidate for Parliament. Despite his constituency largely comprising the University of London, he lost.

A long term activist of the Socialist Fabian Society, sometimes Wells was too revolutionary even for the Fabians. He said to Josef Stalin in a 1934 interview: "It seems to me that I am more to the left than you, Mr Stalin".

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Wells was a small plump man with piercing blue eyes and a drooping moustache.

H. G. Wells in 1907 at the door of his house at Sandgate

Never fully sure of himself, Wells was impatient and unpredictable, prickly and intolerant but loyal to his friends.

He had a high pitched, squeaky voice, which never lost its cockney impudence.

Wells possessed a huge range of energy and had a mischievous, impish humour.

MARRIAGE

In 1887, Wells', Aunt Mary, a cousin of his father, invited him to stay with her for a while. During his stay with his aunt, he grew interested in her daughter, Isabel Mary Wells.

In 1891 Wells married his pretty, sweet natured, bovine, cousin Isabel.

Wells started an affair with Amy Catherine Robbins who was six years younger than him. She was a pupil at the university correspondence college in London where he taught. When Amy spent a weekend with Wells, Isabel realised the situation and gave her husband an ultimatum and within days he'd left his wife. After two years of marriage they were divorced.

Wells married Amy at St Pancras register office on October 27, 1895.

He made Amy change her name preferring Jane. She bore him two sons and was with him until her death in 1927.

Wells believed in free love and had affairs with a significant number of women.  In December 1909, he had a daughter, Anna-Jane, with the writer Amber Reeve.

One of his mistresses was the writer Rebecca West (1892-1983). He called her "panther" and she called him "Jaguar". He had a son, Anthony by her, who became a critically lauded author.

Rebecca West

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Wells' friend J.M. Barrie founded an amateur cricket team called the Allahakbarries in 1890. Wells played for the Allahakbarries along with Arthur Conan Doyle, Jerome K. Jerome, G.K. Chesterton and A.A. Milne.

Seeking a more structured way to play with toy soldiers, H.G. Wells wrote in 1913 Little Wars, which is recognized today as the first recreational wargame. He sometimes played it all day with friends.  Wells is regarded by gamers and hobbyists as "the Father of Miniature Wargaming."

H G Wells had a cat called Mr Peter Wells.

HOMES 

Wells was brought up in the kitchen and backstairs of the Uppark country house near Midhurst where his mother was the housekeeper.

Uppark. By EccentricRichard 

Whilst apprenticed to a chemist Wells lodged at Ye Old Tea Shoppe, Midhurst.

After marrying Isabel Wells moved to Sevenoaks to live with her. It was at 23 Eardley Road there that he wrote The Time Machine.

Wells went to live in Folkestone, Kent for his flagging health in 1898. He had a home built for him there, Spade House on Radnor Cliff Crescent. Some of his best works including Kipps and The History of Mr Polly were written at Spade House.

He lived in London for much of his life. Wells' homes there included a seven-bedroom house at Church Street, Hampstead. Between 1930-37 he lived in a flat at 97 Chiltern Court, Marylebone Road, London. His last home was a terraced house on Hanover Terrace, which overlooked Regents Park.

DEATH AND LEGACY 

A diabetic, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK) in 1934.

Wells died of diabetes aged 79 on August 13, 1946 at home at 13 Hanover Terrace. He was working on the scenario of a film The Way The World Is Going at the time. His last words were "Go away, I'm all right".

His ashes were scattered in Poole harbour, Dorset.