H. G. WellsH. G. Wells wrote almost a hundred books, yet he is generally remembered for only a handful of them. He is known above all as a writer who heralded the future, yet throughout his life he clung to fixed attitudes from the Victorian past. He began his career as a draper's apprentice; by the age of forty-five he had secured an international reputation as the author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Kipps and Tono Bungay; he went on to establish himself as an influential educator, polemicist and sage. In this book John Batchelor offers a readable introduction to Wells's huge and varied output as a writer and thinker. He guides the reader through the whole oeuvre, and argues persuasively that at his best Wells was a great artist: a man with a remarkable, restless imagination (not limited, as many critics have implied, merely to his early romances) and with a coherent and responsible theory of fiction. |
Contents
Love | 32 |
TonoBungay | 62 |
Mr Britling Sees | 94 |
Mr Blettsworthy | 123 |
Conclusion | 155 |
Index | 172 |
ARCHIBALD ALISON 17921867 58 | 58 |
ANONYMOUS 84 | 84 |
DAVID MASSON 18221907 148 | 148 |
GEORGE ELIOT Marian Evans 18191880 159 | 159 |
GEORGE HENRY LEWES 18171878 | 181 |
HENRY JAMES 18431916 | 193 |
The Art of Fiction 1884 | 213 |
VERNON LEE Violet Paget 18561935 | 223 |
JOSEPH CONRAD 18571924 | 238 |
256 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Amber Reeves Ann Veronica artist beauty become Besant Blettsworthy Britling Broxted Bulpington of Blup Bulwer chapter character Conrad criticism Dickens Dr Moreau drama Edwardian Edwardian period effect emotion England English essay experience fact feelings fiction Ford Madox Ford genius George George Eliot give Henry James hero historical romance human ideas imagination incidents intellectual interest Island of Dr James's kind Kipps Kipps's Lady less Lewisham literary literature live London manners marriage Martians Men Like Gods mind modern moral Morlocks narrative narrator nature never novel novelist painting passion Pendennis perhaps person picture plot Polly present prose published Rampole Island reader realism reality Rebecca West remarks represented Review Robert Louis Stevenson scenes Scott seems sense sexual social society story sympathy Teddy Thackeray Thackeray's things Tono-Bungay truth Victorian Wells's writing young